


Hysteria

by lady_of_clunn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Dark, F/M, Female and breathing and you have it, Forced Orgasm, Healer/Patient, Historical medical procedures, Hysteria, Medical Procedures, Post-Hogwarts, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Redeemed Draco, Severe Abuse, The Wizarding World is Victorian in some aspects, Torture, UST, attempted self-mutilation, dub-con, explicit sexual situations, forced admission to medical facility, severe psychological trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:32:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 42,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6053377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_of_clunn/pseuds/lady_of_clunn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wizarding medical care is not always the route of choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Disquiet

**Author's Note:**

> In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work of fiction is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
> 
> This story is very dark. Seriously.
> 
> Now read the tags again. Yes, that's right.
> 
> A huge thank you to Softobsidian74 for alpha reading and to robs55 and stgulik for the excellent beta!

The nurse bustled through the room, making her stand and sit, exposing her arm to draw a blood sample with her wand, and sent her to the small adjoining cloak room to collect a urine sample.

Handing the small cup over to the lab witch, Hermione wondered for the fourth or fifth time today why the healer at her local surgery had looked at her the way she had, written a referral to a specialist without telling her what kind of specialist that was, and sent her to floor three-and-a-half at St. Mungo’s. The diagnostic number on the referral had not told her anything.

Her usual healer had been unavailable. Maybe she should have just rescheduled.

Ward three-and-a-half.

Hermione had heard of that ward before. It was tucked in between floors because it did not house any dormitories for patients. Instead, it consisted of combined examination rooms/offices for external specialist healers coming in at certain days to see patients within St. Mungo’s. In turn, St. Mungo’s reserved a certain number of beds for their private patients and gave free access to their facilities.

Sitting with her legs crossed and one foot jumping impatiently, Hermione waited to be called into the doctor’s office. She had already missed two hours of work this morning for her appointment and she was eager to get back to her desk. Deadlines were approaching, and although she was ahead of schedule, she liked to triple check everything before handing in her projects.

After a life altering event – Hermione refused to even think about the breakup with Ron in anything other than abstract terms – she found herself increasingly tired. At work, where the day was structured and she had to report to her superiors at specific intervals, she managed to function well enough. At home she lacked the strength to do the regular household spells.

Plates, cutlery, utensils, glasses with or without varying amounts of curdled milk or mouldy pumpkin juice, littered her sink and the worktop around it. The stove needed a degreasing spell and she very well knew that she had taken her wet laundry out of the washing machine and placed it in the wash basket.

Two days ago.

Now her clothes were a half-dried, creased mess that actually needed washing again as they had acquired a sour smell not unlike that of foxing.

It seemed too much of an effort to cast the drying and folding spells.

And even if she would have done so, where would she have put the folded clothes?

The last time, she had managed to dry and fold the laundry but had given up at the task of sorting the clothes into her wardrobe.

Her bed had not been made for several weeks now.

All of this might have been fairly normal for many people. For Hermione Granger it was a sign that she needed help or the depression she felt herself slipping into would consume her life fully.

She had consulted her healer in the hope of quickly obtaining a prescription for a mild anti-depressant potion and be on her way until she could work through this rough patch in her life.

Now she wondered whether it would have been not a better idea to go to her GP and get some Muggle pills. A friend of her mother’s used to eat them like Smarties when Hermione was a teenager. It could not be too difficult to get a prescription.

Hermione wiped her hands along the skirt of her suit. She was anxious and restless again. At the same time she felt worn out and tired, although she had woken only three hours earlier. For a short moment, she leaned her head back against the magnolia-coloured wall and closed her eyes. Just for a few moments.

She jolted when her name was called, probably not for the first time, and quickly scrambled to her feet. The healer had already retreated into his office, but the door was open, and she quickly made her way inside and closed the white door behind her with a quiet thudding noise. The inside of the door was padded and reinforced with silencing charms. At least this healer took patient confidentiality seriously.

She turned around and saw a head of platinum blond hair bent over a file-laden desk.

When the healer looked up, Hermione could not fully suppress the flinch of surprise and shock.

“Malfoy?”

“Granger,” he acknowledged.

“You are a healer?”

He leaned back, frowning slightly.

“It appears this way, doesn’t it? “

“I am sorry, Malfoy, but I think it might be better if I see somebody else.”

His frown deepened.

“And why would that be?”

Hermione fidgeted.

“We have too much history, don’t you think?”

“You are a patient. I am a healer. End of story. Personal history is not a factor. Feel free to consult somebody else, but I don’t think you will be able to get an appointment any time soon. Wait lists are long. You were lucky that I could fit you in today due to a cancellation.”

Hermione looked at her watch. Half the workday was already lost; she should at the very least get something out of it in the end.

“Alright,” she said slowly.

His hand open, Draco Malfoy gestured toward the chair in front of his desk.

“Please. Do sit.”

Hermione sat down and smoothed her skirt again with sweaty palms.

Trying to avoid looking at Malfoy, she looked around his office in what she hoped assembled interest. White on white to the point of minimalism, the room looked strangely unused. The laden desk stood out as the only intensely used personal object. A golden snitch, desperately fluttering against the magical field that bound it to a foot-tall brass structure that resembled an abstract outstretched arm and hand, complete with a small plaque mounted at the foot of the trophy, was the only decoration. Hermione could not help feeling pity for the winged ball, eternally bound to striving to escape its invisible prison.

“So.” He was studying her medical file. “You have been experiencing loss of energy, nervousness, insomnia, tiredness, anxiety at times, loss of appetite, difficulty to perform day-to-day tasks, shortness of breath, dizziness,” he paused and looked up at her. “Heaviness in the abdomen?”

“Yes.” Just give me a St. John’s Wort-based potion and be done with it!

Malfoy added something to her file and highlighted it with a touch of his wand.

“When have these symptoms first occurred?”

“About five months ago.”

“Around the time you and Weasley parted ways.”

She gritted her teeth.

“Yes,” she ground out. She did not need him to remind her of the fact.

“Granger, let me be blunt. Do you experience release?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you release your pent up sexual needs?”

She stared at him.

“Malfoy, I really think this is a very bad idea. I will reschedule with another healer.”

He leaned back in his high, leather covered armchair.

“Very well, Granger. But consider that you have been referred to me as one of the leading specialists. I am one of the few healers to take into account psychological and circumstantial factors.”

She swallowed and closed her eyes. Maybe she could make it to the lunch break and work through it, catch up on things.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I do ... release pent up sexual needs.”

His quill was back in his hand.

“And have you done so less frequently in the months since your breakup or has it been a decreasingly satisfactory experience since then?

How did he know? How did he know??

Recently she had been so disinterested and tired that she had fallen asleep with her hand between her thighs, indifferent to continue the listless exercise.

Malfoy put down his quill and stood.

“Granger, I need to examine you to confirm my diagnosis.” He nodded toward a white screen in the corner of the room. “Please divest yourself from the waist down.”

“No.”

He sighed.

“Granger, your condition is serious but very treatable. You suffer from Witches’ Hysteria.”

“What?”

“I understand that the condition must have been latent in you for quite some time, but had been held at bay while in the relationship with Weasley.”

“That is ridiculous, Malfoy! Nobody has been using the diagnosis hysteria for the last hundred years or so! I am simply a bit burnt out; stressed. A bit depressed if you will. Just give me a light mood lifting potion and I’ll be right as rain in no time.”

“So, you are the healer now? And here I thought you worked in the Ministry’s research department.”

He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“There is no such thing as Hysteria, Malfoy!”

With growing annoyance, Hermione realised that her voice had taken on a decidedly, well, hysterical tone.

“You realise that fervent denial is part of the clinical picture?”

Hermione stood.

“I am leaving.”

She was at the door when he spoke again.

“Witches’ Hysteria can be a self destructive condition, if left untreated. I will be forced to report it to your employer, for your own safety.”

Hermione stood very still.

“Are you blackmailing me, Malfoy?”

“No. I am just informing you of the rules.”

“I want another healer.”

Malfoy nodded.

“Healer de Belleme will be back from the symposium in two weeks. I’ll be happy to refer you, but in that case, I still have to report to your employer and give you a sick leave until then.”

Hermione’s shoulders slumped. She had a project due next week, culminating in a presentation she had been preparing for months.

She straightened and looked into his eyes. As calm as she could possibly be, she wanted to make a point.

“I am not hysterical, Malfoy,” she said very slowly.

“Nevertheless, you are not feeling well or you would not be here.”

She knew he had seen the glimmer of uncertainty and fear in her eyes and she hated it.

“Tell you what. I’ll start treating you right now. This way I don’t have to report you, because we are already tackling the problem. As soon as healer de Belleme is back, I’ll hand you over to him.”

“Okay.” Her voice sounded as hesitant as she felt.

“Now, please divest yourself from the waist down. You can leave your skirt on and just push it up.”

That did not sound too bad. He was very professional in his approach. She stepped behind the privacy screen, toed off her pumps and slid her tights and knickers down her legs.

When she stepped back around the partition wall into the room, Malfoy was already sitting on a chair next to an examination bed, covered with a white sheet.

He made her lie down and slide her red cardigan up so he could press his warm hands into her abdomen.

“Is this where you can sometimes feel the heaviness?”

“Yes.”

He nodded.

“Your cycle has been regular? Any lighter or heavier than usual?”

She nodded her answers, ignoring the heat that crept into her cheeks, and he straightened.

With a wave of his wand, he conjured stirrups.

“Please rest your knees on these; it will make it easier for you to relax.”

As soon as she had placed her legs on the anatomically formed holders, the bed shortened to end just before her bottom.

Malfoy rolled his chair in between her legs and she stared up to the ceiling.

“Please push your skirt up to your hips, Granger.”

She lifted her hips and bared her lower body to him.

He is a healer. This is just like an examination with your ob-gyn.

She heard him cast a sterilising spell on his hands, before blowing into thin gloves to separate the material and snapping them on.

“Granger, this is a disposable wand,” he held the generic looking, smooth piece of wood into her line of vision. “It is absolutely sterile.”

She nodded. What did he need to do that required sterile equipment?

He waved it and she felt her legs locked into the stirrups with magic.

Startled, she tried to sit up.

“It’s okay, Granger; this is just to prevent involuntary movement.”

Not appeased in the slightest, she leaned back.

“I need a clear field to work with. This might sting a little.”

“What ... ? Ow!”

Malfoy had removed all traces of pubic hair from her sex. A clear field? She had been far from overgrown!

He used the handle of the wand to draw along her folds and separate them.

Hermione placed her hands on her stomach and looked at the white ceiling. The situation made her feel a bit sick.

She could feel him examining her labia and drawing back the skin above her clit. He kept the skin drawn taut, the pressure of his fingers very evident when he spoke the next incantation.

There was a cool slickness covering the entire area between her thighs. Very quickly the coolness gave way to a warm, tingling feeling. His fingers slid along skin and probed carefully.

Hermione felt like crying.

The tight pressure he was asserting made her feel things she should not be feeling during a healer’s treatment.

“Vibratum.”

The wand made a buzzing sound.

And then he touched it to her skin.

The vibration was stronger than any Muggle toy could ever be. Blood rushed into her sex. The sensation travelled down into her thighs and spread upward into her cervix where it pooled and swirled, thickening quickly. She could already feel the contractions starting.

All the orgasms she had missed during the last months seemed to rush through her, eager to make it to the finish line all at once.

Too shocked and mortified to protest, Hermione lay paralysed, waiting for the climax to humiliate her in front of Draco Malfoy of all people.

And then he took the wand away.

Malfoy kept the touch of the wand feather light, teasing her mercilessly, keeping the tip of the wand at the sensible skin and flesh around her clit, lightening the vibrations and moving away from her most sensitive parts whenever she felt close to bursting.

“What the hell are you doing, Malfoy?”

“Pelvic massage. We have to reduce the residual hysteria by inducing controlled hysterical paroxysm.”

He moved the wand away from her and she could think more clearly.

“Pelvic massage? You are molesting me!”

“Hardly.” The wand’s buzzing became more intense. “This is strictly a medical procedure, practiced since Galen described it eighteen hundred years ago.”

Gloved fingers slid into her.

“Malfoy!”

Her muscles contracted in desperate reflex.

Full, the voice in her mind whimpered.

The tip of the wand was pressed hard into her clitoris, sending magic like electricity into her entire lower body.

The fingers curled.

She must have cried out as the pleasure seized her like she had never felt it before, and left her boneless, drenched in sweat, and with drooping eyes.

She was unable to move or react when she watched Malfoy remove his gloves in a way that they were inside out before he disposed of them, together with the wand he had used.

Suddenly she felt very cold.

He rolled his chair backward and came to stand next to the table. An arm was placed under her legs near to her knees and the leg rests vanished. Malfoy lowered her legs carefully onto the examination bed and angled them so it would be comfortable for her to curl up on her side.

The light dimmed and a warm blanket covered her shivering body.

“Rest. I will be back in fifteen minutes.”

Malfoy had touched her up.

She had orgasmed in front of him, under his hands.

And she would have to come back for more of the same.


	2. Sensilis

The day of her first appointment had been utterly wasted. She had been unable to go into work after the ... therapy.

In fact, she had been unable to do much of anything after Malfoy had helped her up from the white examination bed and waited for her to put her knickers, tights and shoes back on.

Her balance had been shaky and when her underwear was finally in place, she wished for a stool to sit on because her hands and legs did not cooperate and the tights clung to her clammy skin.

In the end she had stuffed the snagged tights into her handbag and slipped the shoes onto her naked feet.

She hoped that Malfoy had not seen her shaking hands when she stepped from behind the white privacy screen.

Seated at his desk he scribbled something onto a small piece of parchment.

“Your next session should be on Thursday.” He hesitated. “Before or after work?”

In light of her current state, she doubted that she would be able to go into work any time soon.

“After, if possible. When is the last free slot?”

Her voice shook slightly.

I am talking to Malfoy about when he is going to get me off next.

“Quarter past five.” He handed the small slip of parchment to her. “Between now and then, no unsupervised release, Granger. And do try to be punctual; I like to be home in time for supper.”

She nodded with flaming cheeks and turned to leave.

Who prepares dinner for him? House-elves? A girlfriend? Not a wife. A Malfoy wedding would have made the Prophet. Was somebody waiting for him in the evenings?

Resting her hand on the door handle, she had to shake herself out of her stray musings.

Malfoy was her healer.

And even if not...

No.

“Good day to you.”

“And you.” She heard his distracted voice as she closed the door behind her.

Instead of making her way to her work place, she used the public Floo to take off the rest of the day.

A bit of research was in order.

Two hours later, Hermione closed the last of the heavy tomes she had piled in front of her on top of the long library table.

Her findings did nothing to appease her.

Although Muggles had stopped diagnosing large parts of the female population as ‘out of health’ with female hysteria, this development had bypassed the wizarding world.

Malfoy had not lied to her. A healer was indeed obligated to report a hysteria patient at her work place or to her husband or father should she refuse treatment.

She would be a model patient.

Malfoy or that other healer de Belleme would not find any trace of hysteria in her after the prescribed eight sessions.

The moving illustrations of the cruciology treatment that appeared to be the equivalent to Muggle electro shocks worried her so much more than the now very distant problem of soggy laundry and unwashed dishes.

At night in the silently dark and warm cocoon of her duvet, she could not help but think of Malfoy’s hands on her.

So sure.

Knowing exactly where to touch.

So deft.

Her hand strayed to the waistband of her cotton pyjama bottoms.

No.

She yanked it back up and placed it on top of the duvet.

Somehow she was sure that he would be able to tell.

***

She had come better prepared this time.

Instead of a Muggle suit, Hermione was wearing trousers that did not require tights and a rather long blouse.

Walking around half-naked in front of Malfoy was not something she wanted to repeat.

It had felt more humiliating than being spread out on the examination table in front of him.

After a long, tiring day at work, she longed to curl up on her sofa and not do much of anything until bed time.

Deciding on the after work appointment had setbacks. After realising that she was not fresh out of the shower like last time, she had taken the time to cast a quick cleansing and freshening charm on herself in her department’s bathroom.

Taking a deep breath, Hermione knocked on the generic white door to Malfoy’s healer’s room on ward three-and-a-half.

“Enter.”

She stepped inside to find him at his desk, much like on Monday morning.

“Good evening, Malfoy.”

“Good evening, Granger. Please take a seat.” He rummaged around his desk for her file and opened it, scanning the last page quickly. “Any changes? To the better? To the worse?”

“Er,” Hermione cleared her throat. “Not really. Although surprisingly, it was quite hard to comply with the no release stipulation.”

He looked up at her and raised his eyebrows.

“Is that so?” She could just see that he was grinning at her inwardly. “Very good!” He added something to her file. Probably ‘Patient horny as a niffler in heat after treatment.’ Or something equally mortifying.

“I also had a... surge of energy, I think you could call it, and spring cleaned my flat.”

Malfoy nodded.

“I saw that you had problems with everyday tasks. This is very interesting, as most of the recorded cases of Witches’ Hysteria have been found in pure-blood witches. They usually report difficulty in keeping up with their social responsibilities or even taking care of themselves, such as bathing and dressing. But then, they would have house-elves to take care of any household duties.”

Again he added a line or two to her file.

“You seem to respond very well to the therapy. If you had been pure-blood, I would simply recommend that your parents start negotiating for a betrothal to a man only slightly older than yourself.” Another line was scratched onto the file. “A man virile enough to engage you at least twice a week.”

Hermione was thankful that he was scratching away with his quill, adding more and more embarrassing detail to her file. She suspected her face to be a deep shade of red. Unfortunately he then looked up, but did not betray any recognition of her discomfort.

“I assume your parents would not be willing to negotiate a marriage for you?”

Hermione stared at him. She had always known that the wizarding community of the British Isles was somewhat conservative, but this was like something from another century. Or another continent.

She swallowed.

“My parents are still in Australia. I had hidden them there during the war under a memory charm. Unfortunately, we were unable to undo a charm as extensive as that without causing severe brain damage.”

She cast her eyes down sadly.

“They don’t know I exist.”

Remembering the original topic, Hermione looked up defiantly.

“But even if they did, they would never arrange a marriage for me. I will marry for love or not at all.”

Malfoy regarded her without any judgement in his eyes and nodded.

“I was simply stating what I would suggest in the case of a pure-blood witch. I am confident that you will be perfectly fine after a bit of treatment.”

She nodded and he stood.

“Please divest yourself from the waist down; I’ll be waiting for you at the examination table.”

Hermione stepped behind the white privacy screen and toed off her loafers. Her socks went inside her shoes and her trousers found a place on a hook in the wall and her purse below it. Why did the man not have a stool behind the screen? After a moment of hesitation, she placed her knickers on top of her purse.

Walking around the examination room barefoot and half-naked made her feel horribly vulnerable.

Malfoy was already standing next to the examination table. He did not have to prompt her to lay down on it.

“Pull up your blouse a bit, please.”

His hands were warm when he pressed down on her abdomen.

“Any pain?”

She shook her head no.

“Very good.”

He cast the spells for the leg rests to appear and the table to shorten.

Hermione waited for him to tell her to place her legs in the holders before she did so. No need to exhibit herself prematurely.

Having Malfoy sitting between her spread legs was still awkward. Hopefully she would be able to be referred to another healer before she became used to it.

“I am using a fresh sterile wand, Granger.” Hermione nodded, not taking her eyes from the ceiling.

He cast the lubrication charm again and the coolness was actually welcome.

“Vibratum.”

The tip of the wand moved in light circles around her clit. Hermione could feel her sex filling and swelling.

For the first time, Hermione dared to let her gaze stray from the blindingly white ceiling above her.

Oh goodness.

Draco Malfoy was between her spread thighs, stimulating her with an expression of deep concentration on his features.

The movements of his wand caused a sweet ache inside her.

He was unaware of her watching him and she found it strangely arousing to see how careful he was with her. She had half expected him to be bored or annoyed, but he worked deftly and without judgement.

His position must have become uncomfortable or the angle at which he was holding his wand was tiring his hand; he suddenly shifted on his seat and placed one hand on the inside of her thigh, opening her just a bit further.

His warm hand on her, the strong yet gentle grip, the sight of his long fingered hand...

Her orgasm took her by surprise, rolling over her in a shocking wave of sensation that made her muscles lock and her breath hitch.

Malfoy had not anticipated her reaction either and was delayed in removing the wand. Only when she made a distressed sound of protest at the instrument still touching her, he quickly ended the vibration spell and removed the tip of it from her sex.

“I am sorry,” he said, furrowing his brow. “I had not anticipated you being so sensitive.”

Neither had she. Nor did she know why she had reacted to his hand on her leg so much more intensely than to a wand meant to stimulate her, touching her most sensitive area.

He breathed out in a frustrated huff.

“This was definitely too fast. I don’t think it will suffice to eradicate enough of the build-up.”

It was quite obvious that he was angry with himself, maybe even slightly embarrassed. The thought was absurd as she was the one who was spread out in front of him, legs high and wide.

“With a light numbing potion... Or we could just wait half an hour.”

He sat still for a minute or two, contemplating his options and staring at her crotch in an absent-minded way.

“Damn, I have to be at the fundraiser in an hour and a half.”

He now seemed to remember that she was still there in front of him, humiliatingly bared.

“I apologise again!”

He released her legs and helped her to sit up when she struggled to do so.

“Would you like to rest?”

Hermione shook her head no. She did not feel as drained as before and just wanted to go home and forget about St. Mungo’s and treatments and Malfoy. Yes. Forgetting about Malfoy at least for the weekend sounded like a marvellous concept.

“No, thank you, I’ll be fine.”

Her response did not have the desired effect.

Malfoy all but ripped the gloves off his hands and forcefully threw them along with the wand into the bin.

“It’s anything but fine!” he exclaimed, calming down a bit when he saw her flinch at his loud tone of voice.

“You should be tired, drained of all the emotions and stress that could cause more hysterical residue.”

He raked his fingers through his blond hair.

“Do you really feel alright going home like this?”

There was a tone of genuine concern in his voice.

“Like this?” She smiled. “Rather not. May I dress first?”

He smiled back at her and relaxed his shoulders a bit. Rolling his seat back, he gave her space to stand and make her way to her belongings behind the screen.

When she had managed to guide her feet into her fine black socks and through her trousers she found him behind his desk, scribbling on a piece of parchment that he then held out to her.

“My Floo address. Promise me to call, if you experience any problems over the weekend.”

Hermione’s eyebrows rose.

“You do house calls?”

“Not usually, but I am obviously not up to par tonight and you should not suffer because of my shortcomings.”

“I am sure I will be fine, Malfoy,” she said softly.

Malfoy pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded jerkily.

“I hope so, too. But really; call any time, day or night. We don’t want any relapses.”

“Okay.”

Merlin forbid.

Hermione opened her handbag and slipped the parchment with Malfoy’s contact details into the little compartment in which she usually kept her shopping lists.

“Until Monday then,” she said, and this time he actually looked at her when he replied.

“Until then, Granger, and don’t forget: Any time.”

Hermione nodded and left, determined to prove him wrong.

Over the weekend, she forced herself into a regime of discipline.

Sleeping in but not too long; hanging the wash right after taking it out of the machine; washing the dishes of the day in the evening.

No working on Ministry files.

No calling Draco Malfoy when all she wanted was to crawl under her duvet for a ‘nap’ and touch the throbbing little bundle of nerves that was reminding her of him with every step she took, her jeans pressing against it.

Frustrated, she decided to go for a walk along the high street in the nearby Muggle village.

Browsing through the many charity shops used to be among her favourite weekend activities.

Sometimes she found a treasure for decorating her house or for her kitchen or for her book collection.

When she found herself perusing the extensive selection of Mills and Boon novels, she lingered on the ones marked medical romance. Hermione caught herself holding two, looking for a third one to get ‘three for a pound’. Resolutely she put the books back on the shelf and walked out of the shop.

Her appointment was tomorrow.

She really should be able to restrain herself until then.


	3. Transference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please note that from the second half of this chapter onward some of the warnings start to apply.

This time Malfoy did not sit at the desk when she opened the door, but stood near the table.

He was already pulling on his thin, white gloves.

He motioned her toward the screen and spoke while she was preparing herself.

“Any problems over the weekend, Granger?”

She slipped off her shoes and set her purse next to her pretty new kitten heel pumps.

“No. A bit restless maybe, but nothing out of the ordinary.” Besides my current obsession with the medical field.

Hermione slid her knickers down her legs and put them on top of her hand bag again before stepping into the room.

This time, the table was already shortened and the stirrups in place.

Hermione sat between them and scooted backward. She grasped the hem of her robes and bunched the material of her skirt up to rest on her knees and thighs before lying down on the starched white sheet.

“Please pull your robe up and place your knees on the leg rests.”

Hermione obeyed and heard him roll his chair between her legs.

“I will pour a potion over you; it’s oil-based and the main properties are lily, musk root and crocus. It should not be cold.”

“Okay.”

Hermione felt a thin stream of oil run along her nether lips.

Musk root and crocus.

The oils would probably enhance blood flow and...

She nearly jumped out of her skin as fingers were pressed against her flesh to stop the oily potion from trickling down too low. Malfoy’s entire hands then pressed up and slid over her sex, coating her in the warming oil.

A tingling feeling made her widen her legs a bit further.

This was a much slower and more torturous approach than last time.

Also more intimate.

He had not touched her that much and fully. She had not felt how warm the palm of his hand was on her.

Hermione could hear her own breathing speed up and become louder in the silent room.

She could feel her pulse; first in her throat, then a second later it echoed in between her legs.

Gentle fingers massaged firm circles around her embarrassingly swollen clit.

He must think her absolutely wanton!

His fingers moved effortlessly over her oil-slicked flesh. Visualising his practiced hands between her thighs made her womb contract in pleasure and she unconsciously bucked her hips.

Mortified, she was glad that he did not comment but simply put his left hand on her abdomen, fingers splayed wide, asserting the delicious sensation of being held in place.

His other hand insistently played with her; rolling, rubbing, sliding, pinching.

Without warning, pleasure rolled over like a flood wave.

It curled her toes, clenched her fists and made her call out.

After a few seconds of heavy silence, in which she only heard her own breathing, she ripped her legs out of the stirrups and ran to her shoes behind the white privacy screen.

Somehow, she could not find her knickers, and blindly grabbed her purse while shoving her feet into her shoes.

She did not look back; did not say her goodbyes as she tore the door open and ran along the corridor, the clicking of her heels loud on the polished stone floor.

At home she curled herself into the heavy armchair she had inherited from her parents.

The stimulating oil warmed her sex, emanating its effects into her thighs and abdomen. A warm pulsing made her very aware of how full and heavy her nether lips were.

Resisting the urge to slide her hand between her thighs, she slipped into a light slumber.

Hours later, as night had already fallen, she woke from a gentle hand brushing her hair away from her face.

A cheek was pressed against hers and soft lips found her neck.

“Never run away from me, Hermione.”

Hands slid along her arms, over her hips and to her legs.

She still could not see who it was, who had found their way into her small terraced house. It was dark and he was touching her, yet she was not afraid.

He seemed familiar.

Hands hooked underneath her knees and moved them to drape over the padded arm rests.

Her robes were pushed up and bared her to the stranger.

“I was not finished with you.”

He was kneeling in front of the armchair.

She could hear the sound of his belt buckle being undone.

His fingers opened her and for a terrifying, arousing second, she sat motionless, feeling unable to hide even the most cherished thought, the secrets hidden the very deepest; as if he could see right into her soul.

And then for the first time in many, many months, male, hard flesh was parting her, filling her, stretching her to the hilt.

Hermione felt her muscles contract in anticipation around him and he gripped her hips with strong hands.

With brutal thrusts he started to fuck her into the upholstery of the chair. He did so methodically and with such determination, that she could only hold on to the arm rests of the chair and hold still.

She had never before climaxed from intercourse alone, and was astonished to feel the distinct tightening in her abdomen already building. The man leant down to bring his mouth near her ear.

“Say my name, Hermione.”

She tried to look into his face and see who the man was, but shadows hid his features however hard she looked.

“Say it! I want to hear you say it again!”

And then she looked into grey eyes and cried out as she had a few hours before.

She woke drenched in sweat, heaving for breath, and with her fingers buried between her legs, sticky with her own juices.

Self-consciously she looked around, half expecting to find Draco Malfoy standing near the fireplace, pouring firewhisky into a wide tumbler.

But there was no one.

She was alone in her house.

As always.

Feeling a strange pang of disappointment, she shook herself out of it.

It was high time to change the healer.

***

The next appointment had come by owl. A small standard notification parchment, used by St. Mungo’s for just this purpose, told her to be at the hospital on Thursday next at five thirty in the evening.

There was no note further to that. No mention of the incident. No snide remark scrawled underneath the date.

Maybe she would be able to pretend the last appointment had never happened.

She told herself sternly that Draco... Malfoy... Healer Malfoy was a professional and that this was all a case of transference, which would be forgotten as soon as she could be referred to a different healer.

Yes.

All would be well.

Then why had she stood in front of his door for the last seven minutes and did not dare to enter?

Not honouring the appointment would mean that Malfoy would be obliged to report her to her employer.

She loved her job, and just today her supervisor had remarked how fresh and rosy she looked. Had she spent some time in the first rays of spring sun?

Hermione had flushed deeply. She had a fairly good idea what caused her to look fresh.

Yes. Her job was worth a few minutes of embarrassment.

She lifted her hand to knock on the pristine door when it was suddenly yanked open.

Malfoy looked startled seeing her right in front of his office door and stepped aside.

“Granger! What are you doing outside? Come on in; healer de Belleme is due any minute!”

He ushered her in as if her last appointment had not ended badly and made her sit in the visitor’s chair.

“Right.” He sat in his high-backed arm chair. “I have already written a case summary for healer de Belleme and he will join us shortly to take over your case.” He shuffled parchments around on his desk and straightened a quill that did not need straightening. “I must say I am sorry to lose your case. It is very interesting and will probably go into the instruction manuals for student-healers, since it is so unique to find Witches Hysteria in Muggle-borns.”

“Oh?”

She was... interesting?

He looked at her earnestly.

“How are you, Granger? I was concerned after you left last time. More than once I was tempted to get your Floo address and check in on you.”

Oh?

“I was... embarrassed.”

“Please don’t be!”

She did not know how she found the strength to look into his eyes.

“You are in a difficult position, Granger. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

When she did not respond, he shuffled his files a bit more.

“Have you thought about a new relationship?” Unbidden her heart started beating in hopeful astonishment. “It might be the solution to this problem.”

Oh.

“I don’t want to have...” sex “a relationship for the sake of problem solving. That would hardly be fair on the other party.”

He nodded gravely.

“I thought you might see it as such. I also think that your case is not a severe one; we managed to diagnose in the early stages.” He smiled. “After completing the therapy you should be fine. You might want to consider regular prophylactic sessions about every three months or so. There are also new, alternative methods such as therapeutic piercing...”

He trailed off as he saw her clench her thighs and sit in a rigid position.

“Never mind. Healer de Belleme is more conservative in his approach than I, but if you ever feel you want to discuss alternative methods, please do not hesitate to make an appointment with me.”

Hermione nodded, feeling suddenly apprehensive to reveal this hysteria business to yet another person. Malfoy had not been as horrible as she had expected.

Without knocking or other warning, the door flew open and a large, stocky man in old fashioned healer robes strode in. There were several medals and badges signifying his specialisations and achievements pinned to the breast of his white robe.

“There you are, Draco! And this must be the transfer case.”

He leant down to stare into Hermione’s eyes. “Miss Granger, I assume?”

She wanted to nod but he had already grasped her chin and turned her face this way and that.

“Muggle-born, eh? Very interesting. Very interesting, indeed.”

Malfoy cleared his throat.

“I have compiled her file and added a copy of the summary I had sent you yesterday.” He held out the vellum-covered stack of parchments but healer de Belleme did not even look his way while taking it.

“Very well, very well. Off we go now, Miss. Come along.”

Feeling puzzled and out of place, Hermione followed healer de Belleme out of Malfoy’s office. She looked back just before closing the door behind her and met his eyes for a moment. He leant against his desk, a slight frown marring his features.

Healer de Belleme strode in front of her, moving with purpose; head held high, nodding whenever they crossed the path of St. Mungo’s staff.

His office door was wider and heavier than Malfoy’s, oak studded with ironwork.

It shut with a clunk and stopped any noise from the outside corridor from penetrating the office.

It was dark and reminded her of Professor Snape’s office at Hogwarts. There were artefacts swimming in glass jars; bubbling apparatuses on a work bench in a corner; heavy wooden furniture everywhere. The walls were a deep red colour and every available space had been covered in framed documents, newspaper clippings and photographs that all showed the same subject. Healer de Belleme meeting the Minister of Magic; shaking hands with Dumbledore; wizards in unfamiliar uniform robes – diplomats perhaps; elegantly dressed wizards and witches holding champagne glasses; a puzzled looking Harry Potter looked into the camera with wide eyes, his mouth a perfect ‘o’ as de Belleme clasped his hand and threw his left arm around Harry’s shoulder. This seemed to have taken place at one of the any press conferences Harry had to attend during the first year after defeating Voldemort.

Hermione bit her lip to suppress a smile, imagining the healer sending out invitations for ‘de Bell Club Parties’.

The healer motioned her to sit in a comfortable wing chair but did not take his seat behind his desk. Instead, he stood in front of her, leafing through the parchments in her file.

“Feeling restless and struggling with the daily tasks of life, I see. Insomnia, irritability, etc., etc.” Another page turned. The healer looked up. “Unmarried as of yet, feeling compelled to produce venereal excitement by the hand?”

“What?”

“Now, Miss Granger, I do not quite agree with my younger colleagues on this issue. This is very grave indeed. A witch should not engage in this kind of self-pollution. I am very surprised that healer Malfoy only saw fit to prescribe supervised paroxysm by pelvic massage and not something more profound.”

Hermione had a sinking feeling but remained silent, since she was unsure what any kind of comment from her side would produce in this environment.

The healer closed her file with a snap.

“Well, we will see. Leave your things behind the screen; you know what is required.”

This screen was an intricately carved wooden one with heavy, dark blue velvet drapes.

Thankful once more for her choice of robes, she only had to shed her knickers and returned to the examination room still fully covered by her ankle-length skirt.

There was no clean, white examination table, but rather a reclining, iron-cast chair, upholstered and covered in camel-coloured leather. It looked like an old fashioned barber’s chair or something she had seen in the museum of dentistry that she had visited with her parents when she was a child.

Or like something from Sweeney Todd.

De Belleme opened the clasp on a rolled up leather satchel. With a flick of his wrist it unrolled on top of one of the tables laden with experiments.

Small compartments held thin, vicious, spiked, thorned and hooked objects. His hand hovered over the selection for long seconds, drawing out the pleasure of selecting the right tool.

“Have a seat. Slide forward a bit.”

She complied and he waved his wand to make the leg rests appear.

He did not have gloves.

Nor did he make a move to Scourgify his hands as Malfoy had done every time.

“Aren’t you going to use a sterile wand?”

He looked at her in astonishment.

“Why ever would I do that? Now go on, place your legs in the holders.”

He had already moved quite close.

“I... I don’t know whether I feel comfortable with that.”

He looked at her for a second and tapped a swirling paper weight on a nearby side table with his wand.

“Are you refusing treatment, Miss Granger?”

“No!” He looked at her enquiringly. The word had come out much more forcefully than intended. “I mean, of course not, it’s just that I think I have become accustomed to healer Malfoy’s methods.”

“Well, it is your prerogative to go back to his treating you.” His voice was now void of anything akin to friendliness. “However he has left for the day already and your next treatment is overdue. I suggest we continue.”

Hermione breathed deeply. This was not going the way she had envisioned it. She leaned back against the back and head rest and reluctantly placed her knees on the leg rests.

The healer scooted very close and rather roughly parted her nether lips with his possibly unwashed hands.

Hermione felt her muscles tense up. Did he want to give her an infection? He was a medical professional for goodness sake!

He proceeded to prod and examine her while she tried to recall what his finger nails had looked like.

For a few moments he lifted his hands from her only to forcefully massage the area around her clitoris. Without the lubrication spell, his fingers dragged over her skin, pulling it, pulling uncomfortably on her flesh.

He moved what she thought might be his thumb to her clit.

It hurt.

She whimpered in pain and tried to relax; tried to think about something else. Anything.

He seemed to misinterpret the small sound of discomfort and sped up the motion of his thumb.

“Ow!”

Hermione rose up on her elbows and removed her legs from the stirrups.

“Please, I am truly not feeling well today. I would like to reschedule my appointment.” With healer Malfoy.

“You are not feeling well enough for treatment, Miss Granger?”

“I apologise, healer de Belleme. It is just not a good day I am afraid.”

He kept his eyes on her and nodded slowly, while he tapped the paper weight one more time.

Just as Hermione arranged her skirts and made to rise from the padded leather seat of the ornate cast iron chair, several things happened at once.

The door opened and a matronly-looking nurse hurried inside while de Belleme used Hermione’s distracted state to cast a spell on her that threw her back onto the chair, knocking the breath from her lungs.

Paralysed by shock, Hermione could only watch as the healer waved his wand and suddenly her hips were belted down to the chair.

The healer loomed over her and before she could collect herself he had grasped her wrists and crossed her arms, pressing her hands painfully into her shoulders.

The nurse had obviously expected this. She pointed her wand at her and another tight leather strap restrained her effectively from moving her upper body and arms.

“What are you doing?”

Panic quivered in her voice.

How had everything gone so wrong and pear-shaped in a matter of minutes?

Hermione tried to lift her head to be able to see what the healer was doing. He had seized one of her legs and spread and lifted it into the leg rest with a sudden, jerking movement.

She had tried to fight this and a muscle in her hip cramped painfully.

Hermione shrieked in pain and struggled in earnest.

“No! Let me go!”

Her leg was secured by magic, and the other immobilised and restrained as well.

The nameless nurse stepped behind her and put a cool hand across her forehead, holding her head pressed into the headrest. A spell forced Hermione’s jaws to open and with horror Hermione felt something that she could only describe as a rubber bit being forced between her teeth.

Yet another leather strap replaced the hand of the nurse.

A feeling of panic and claustrophobia filled her, trapped in her body.

The muscles in her hip were still cramping.

In desperation she tried to loosen the restraints to find relief.

“I honestly cannot fathom how Malfoy could misjudge this case as crassly as he has. This is one of the most severe cases of hysteria I have ever seen. She is obviously trying to evade treatment. After we are finished here, she should be transferred to the special section of the Janus Thickey Ward and her employer must be notified.” He sat heavily on the chair that made his face come level with her knees. “It would be irresponsible to let her trick us into allowing her to carry on as she has been doing.”

Hermione whimpered in pain and fear.

The healer started once again to drag his thumb over her dry, aggravated clitoris.

The nurse gently swiped a few strands of hair away from her face.

“There, there, dear. The healer will make you all better.”

“Vibratum.”

His wand was not smooth and made for medical treatment. It was his wand that he had used since he bought it at age eleven; carried in his pocket; thrown around in his dorm at Hogwarts; put on tables in pubs and libraries and in the dining room. The wand one or several familiars had most probably toyed with.

Hermione wondered in a strangely removed way whether the thing in her mouth would make her suffocate on her own sick.

The vibration was strong and the uneven wood tore at her soft skin.

The orgasm it forced from her was painful and she knew she had been crying and sobbing the entire time the healer worked her.

Strapped down to the examination chair, eyes red and snot running from her nose down over her lips and into her held-open mouth she must be looking mindless and deranged.

The healer stood.

“Nurse, will you prepare her for the ward? I will administer the potion.”

He moved to a glass cabinet displaying rows and rows of neatly-stacked vials and retrieved a lime green potion.

The nurse had meanwhile poured a sharp-smelling liquid onto a clean rag and swiped Hermione’s sex from top to bottom. It stung where the treatment had left her skin raw and inflamed.

De Belleme opened the vial and unceremoniously emptied its contents into her gagged mouth before covering both her mouth and nose with his hand.

It was sticky and smelled of cunt.

Thankfully, she was still able to swallow around the strange gag. She was so occupied with what the healer was doing to her that she nearly missed that something was shoved into her.

She could not tell what it was or where exactly this... object had gone.

But it was uncomfortable to say the least. It put a strange pressure on her bladder. She felt as if she needed to pee.

Oh gods, please don’t let me wet myself in front of them.

Then everything went out of focus and slipped away.


	4. Asperitas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to Softobsidian74 for alpha reading, honest feedback and suffering through it and to robs55 for the excellent beta and being totally unfazable.
> 
> **Please heed the warnings! This chapter is not pleasant in the least. Many of the healers' comments are 'wizardised', reworded quotes from medical professionals who treated hysteria patients in Victorian times and earlier.**

The grey ceiling above her was vaulted and cracked.

Three cracks in the upper right vault.

Two to the left.

And two crossing from one vault diagonally into the other.

Hermione knew the ceiling well.

She did not want to look left or right at the other women occupying this forgotten and neglected part of the Janus Thickey Ward.

Without looking Hermione knew that the woman to her right, a red haired witch of around thirty-five years, was rocking back and forth in her straightjacket, humming senseless melodies and staring at her naked feet.

On her left there was a younger girl, a little older than Hogwarts age. She was not restrained and sat in her cloak, a small satchel at her side.

“Daddy will pick me up today. He promised. Daddy is always right.”

She had told Hermione so two days ago, when she had woken up in the hospital bed.

Daddy had not come. Not that day, not yesterday and Hermione was now quite sure that he would not come to pick up his daughter today either. Or tomorrow.

Hermione’s back hurt.

She had been in the bed for more than two days now. Due to the restraints, she could not turn onto her side. Her wrists were securely fastened to the metal bed frame and so were her ankles.

Neither of her two bed neighbours spoke much. Maybe that was because she could not answer.

The gag had been removed every now and then, but only to administer the nutrient potion or ask her the occasional question.

But soon, too soon, they always forced the rubbery bit back into her mouth, petting her cheek, telling her to be a good girl and accept it. She did not want to bite off her own tongue in a hysterical fit, did she?

Not even mealtimes were interrupting the melting of one hour into the other; morning into afternoon into evening into night.

The nutrient potion given to the patients restrained to the bed was easy to administer and made her low maintenance as far as the nurses were concerned.

Harry, where are you?

Are you looking for me?

Yesterday we were supposed to have lunch together. What did you do when I never came to the restaurant?

Her eyes followed the crack in the ceilings, and she wondered just how long it would take until she would hum along or tell herself that today, today surely, Harry would pick her up and take her home.

The door opened, but it was not Harry who walked in. Healer de Belleme strode in, his medals gleaming on the left side of his chest.

In his wake a group of about fifteen wizards and witches in apprentice healer robes entered the room.

Healer de Belleme stood next to her bed, adopting an imperious stance.

He removed the clipboard with what she assumed was her case history from the foot of her bed, and flipped through the notes the nurses had made during the last two days.

“Alright then. Twenty-six year old female, Muggle-born, symptoms include insomnia, restlessness, loss of energy, nervousness, tiredness, anxiety, loss of appetite, difficulty to perform day-to-day tasks, shortness of breath, dizziness and heaviness in the abdomen.”

He looked at the eager faces of his students.

“Diagnosis?”

He let his gaze wander over the group.

“Blancbaston?”

The young healer startled.

“Er... I... Witches’ Hysteria?”

“Don’t make it a question, Blancbaston. Correct.”

Healer de Belleme turned his attention to yet another apprentice.

“Treatment? Payne?”

Pain? More pain?

“Pelvic Massage after Galen, sir.”

“Very good, apprentice healer Payne. Now in this case, pelvic massage has been administered in four sessions. It appeared to be a successful route of therapy, until the subject suddenly refused treatment. What are alternative or additional cures? Fitzmason?”

“Sensory deprivation, hydrotherapy, Cruciology, sir.”

Hermione had trouble breathing. In her research she had indeed seen the pictures and read the articles.

“Very good. You all seem to have done your reading exercises. Now it is time to put the information into practice. Payne, will you demonstrate the technique as described in your textbooks, please?”

Another nameless nurse, this one with blonde hair, grasped the edge of the duvet on Hermione’s bed and flipped it over to double it up and expose her legs to the view of the group of apprentice healers.

Hermione closed her eyes.

Strapped down to a bed.

A gag in her mouth so she would not injure herself. Or maybe so she would not talk?

And now this.

Harry!

The nurse loosened one of the ankle restraints at the bed frame and pushed her leg so it was bent at the knee. Then she looped the strap around Hermione’s thigh and secured it at the ankle. The nurse repeated the action with her left foot and parted her knees.

This time, the tears came silently.

She knew it was not a good idea to fight. Not that she could. Especially when she could not communicate.

She did not want another dose of that potion that had left her disoriented and scared, a prisoner of her own nightmares.

The apprentice healer did not Scourgify his hands or put on gloves. Hermione did not want to think of all the foul things that could happen to her with this unsanitary behaviour.

Apprentice Payne started rubbing Hermione’s nether regions with clumsy movements; he could not quite decide which fingers to use or where to concentrate his efforts.

Had he never had a girlfriend? Or had he never cared enough to arouse her? Or was this treatment simply so far removed from and not associated with anything remotely sexual?

Hermione cried out around the gag.

“Very good, Payne. You found the spot. Now keep it up until the paroxysm.”

No, Hermione screamed in her head. It hurts! It hurts!

“Witches should not resort to rubbing,” de Belleme lectured. “It is a wizard’s job, suitable only for husbands and healers.”

“Vibratum,” apprentice healer Payne’s voice came from between her knees.

Ten minutes later she felt raw and ill. She wanted to curl up and never let anybody touch her again.

She never wanted to even think about that place between her legs ever again.

It hardly registered with her that the nurse replaced the restraints in their initial positions and covered her with the duvet as the other apprentice healers moved on to their own practice subjects.

“No. I cannot take my things off. I have to be ready. My daddy will pick me up today to take me home.”

Hermione heard the sounds of a struggle to her left and then muffled sounds of distress.

“Vibratum.”

And then finally, the group in lime green robes left.

The girl from the other bed limped over to Hermione, slipping back into her cloak.

Her hair was in disarray, several strands had escaped her braids.

“My daddy will pick me up today, don’t you think?”

Hermione wished she could smile or say a few comforting words, but couldn’t.

She simply nodded her head a little and the girl resumed her usual place on the bed, next to her small suitcase.

“I know daddy will be here soon,” the girl said, her eyes wide and haunted.

***

The nights were the worst. There had been only two nights so far, but Hermione had already learnt that the night was not her friend in this part of the Janus Thickey Ward.

Here, darkness did not embrace and protect her, cradling her in her sleep until morning. Here, darkness meant absence of staff. Here, darkness meant silence that amplified the incoherent mumblings, the sobs and the hollow sounds of large institutional halls. Here, darkness meant sudden appearances of unrestraint patients who stood next to Hermione’s bed, staring at her with empty eyes.

Here, darkness meant that the keepers were on duty.

The first night she thought he was a potion-induced dream.

The burly man in the light blue robes of the care wizards had stood next to her bed for a good while, and when Hermione woke from a disorienting half-slumber, the burly man was still there, standing motionless.

When she woke again, as the grey light of early morning seeped into the ward, he was gone.

The next night there was no potion to sedate her, but the nurses had kept the rubber bit in place, explaining that it was not uncommon ‘for the likes of her’ to bite off her own tongue. Or injure other people. The staff had to be protected.

Hermione had stared at the brunette nurse with wide eyes.

She was not dangerous!

She was not dangerous!

She wasn’t, was she?

The keeper had been by her side again the next night.

He had been so still that Hermione had been convinced to be dreaming, or that her brain was misinterpreting the shadows in the ward.

And then he touched her.

It was a very light touch.

Rough, calloused fingertips brushing her cheek.

“Soft,” he had breathed and fled.

The third night, Hermione was aching between her thighs. The apprentice healers had been practising on her until the delicate membrane had been dry and inflamed. Others had taken to sketching on their parchment boards, coming as close as possible as not to miss the smallest detail, crowding the limited space at the foot of her bed.

The angry throb at the apex of her legs kept her awake, fearing the next day.

He had come as if appearing out of thin air.

For a few minutes he watched her on the narrow hospital bed, bound to the metal frame.

Her eyes grew wide when he approached her and folded back her white duvet. Instinctively, she clenched her thighs to hide from his view.

Outside her range of vision, he did something to her ankle restraints. They were not has tight anymore; not pulling her legs toward the end of the bed like a medieval torture rack.

He gently touched the abraded skin around the stiff straps and disappeared without as much as a whisper.

Moments later he was back, setting several objects on top of her bedside cabinet.

He had brought more restraints and used them to fasten her knees to the metal frame at the side of the bed, now that her legs had more leeway to move.

She tried to struggle, but his hands were large and strong and her efforts did not seem to hinder him in the slightest.

When he pushed her open-backed hospital night robe up to her waist, she whimpered. He did not hear, or pretended not to hear, and gazed at her raw sex.

“The junior house healers were harsh with you.”

Petrified with fear, Hermione watched him return to her bedside cabinet and cast aguamenti calda, dousing a length of white cotton in warm water before pouring a potion onto it from a phial.

With gentle pressure, he placed the compress to her tormented genitals.

The relief was instant and gratitude flooded her.

He applied another potion to her ankles and wrists where the leather restraints had worn down her skin.

“I remember you from Hogwarts.”

Surprised, she looked up, trying to see his face more clearly. He somewhat resembled Draco Malfoy’s friends, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, but she could not remember him.

“I left school after my OWL’s, didn’t do too well, wanted to do something useful, help people.”

He removed the compress and poured another potion onto a small piece of cotton gauze. He used it to carefully apply the soothing potion to the angry skin of her sex. This auxiliary care wizard was finally taking basic hygiene precautions, something the healers hardly ever bothered to comply with. A sloppily cast Scourgify was the most she had come to expect of them.

The keeper methodically replaced her night robes and restraints, and covered her legs with the duvet.

For a while he looked at her as if uncertain how to proceed. He reached around her neck and deftly pulled the strings of her night robes loose. His beefy hands had practiced the movements countless times, moving with an exact grace as he pulled the neckline down and bared her breasts.

None of the nurses or healers had ever examined her upper body.

Hermione felt uneasy. The atmosphere had changed to an intense silence.

After a few minutes, the keeper covered her and lifted her head to sweep her curls out of the way for securing the strings again.

“Try to rest. I will be back tomorrow night.”

While watching him exit the ward, Hermione bit down on the piece of rubber in her mouth and tightened her grip on the metal bars to which her wrists were bound.

Healer de Belleme had the nurses remove her gag. Yes, her gag. There was no denying its most primary function. Finally back in power of her own speech, Hermione had dared to reason with the healer, counting on the many apprentices and nurses present as witnesses that she would be able to resolve the situation.

She had worded her request to be re-evaluated with utmost care. She had kept her tone of voice level and business-like. She had tried to remain calm and composed when the healer had not answered her right away, but rather examined her like an interesting specimen floating in a jar on one of his shelves.

Her resolve had crumbled and finally slipped when he had instructed the junior house wizards to take note of the extent of her illness. To not forget to describe demeanour and enticing facade of reason.

The nurses and students had ignored her now pleading voice and jotted down notes on their note pads. Some of them had taken to sketching as part of their reports.

Now, de Belleme was showing the apprentice healers how to use their wands to warm a small, bulb-shaped glass.

He circled the flame around the small opening, building the heat evenly.

He nodded in the general direction of the door and a nurse came walking toward Hermione’s bed, heels clicking on stone, her deep blue robes rustling under the starched white apron.

This nurse had her hair in a severe blond bun, halfway covered by her nurse’s cap.

She was one of the no-nonsense nurses. Nonsense obviously meant compassion, thorough care and friendliness. More often than not, she handled her patients like ragdolls.

Without further ado, the nurse reached between Hermione’s legs and took hold of her outer labia. With a sudden tug, she wrenched Hermione’s pussy wide open. Her fingernails dug into skin and flesh, making pain shoot through Hermione.

The small glass cup was placed directly on the upper part of her sex.

At first she felt nothing.

Then a weird, slightly uncomfortable sensation started building, sucking on her flesh with steady insistence.

Tiny lightning bolts of pleasure shot through her abdomen and she could not suppress a rocking motion of her hips.

De Belleme gazed down at her on the bed with clinical interest. With his wand, he flicked the small suction cup and Hermione flinched with her whole body in response.

“Remove the cup; we do not want to cause damage.”

Apprentice healer Payne fumbled with the cup and pinched delicate tissue before he finally managed to separate it from her engorged flesh.

For the first time in what felt like weeks, Hermione felt pleasure. The group of trainee healers stood in a semi-circle around her bed, staring at her swollen pussy, clip boards at the ready.

The head healer strutted like a peacock, chest and medals pushed out.

“As you can see, the cupping has the subject much more agreeable to treatment. It will also help to reduce the time spent in menial labour with each patient. Do take note that each case has to be evaluated individually. Not all witches can bear the suction.”

He looked at his patient, whose hair was matted from too many days spent in bed and too little time allocated for personal hygiene. The nurses had given up trying to disentangle her hair after the first morning.

Hermione’s eyes were unfocussed.

“We shall now move her to the hydrotherapy room. A simple drying spell might be enough to avoid unpleasant amounts of water, yet as we do have a room at our disposal we shall make good use of it.”

Two of the keepers unbound her from the bed frame and grasped her upper arms, hauling her to a sitting position and then to her feet.

The few days spent in confinement to the bed had weakened her frighteningly. Hermione could feel the effort of her muscles to comply and carry her forward, but the short distance past three or four beds and through the door labelled ‘Balineum’ left her short of breath and with a fine sheen of sweat covering her body.

All fantasies of breaking free and fleeing the dark and neglected halls were effaced.

Feeling the padded reclining chair beneath her brought relief to her under-used muscles and lungs.

Having her legs spread by the keepers was nothing new by now and Hermione silently wondered whether there would come the point of no return, where she would exhibit herself to anyone at any time, whether this would destroy her cultural training and ingrained social patterns of conduct.

She felt a pang when she realised that she also considered that this might never come for her; that her life could become an endless nightmare of grey days and people staring, probing, reaching, hurting between her legs.

De Belleme had positioned himself standing between her wide-open knees.

“Aguamenti durus.”

The strong, ice-cold jet of water hit the hyper-sensitive bundle of nerves normally hidden between protective folds of skin.

She could not help it.

Really, she could not.

Hermione shrieked.

Unperturbed, the healer maintained a steady hand in directing the massaging stream.

“At first, the sensation is usually perceived as pain, as you can see. Do not stray from the prescribed method, though. Soon enough, the patient will welcome hydrotherapy eagerly.”

After the shock of coldness along with pain and finally numbness, her body sought to balance the temperature in the tiny organ so viciously attacked.

Blood rushed into her sex and she lifted her hips to welcome the pulsing water.

The healer saw Hermione’s head fall back and smirked at his students.

“Nevertheless you should be careful never to exceed the prescribed five to six minutes at most.”

He kept his wand trained at his patient’s genitalia even as he could hear her gasp and cry out, and see the paroxysm find its crisis in spasming muscles.

“Finite Incantatem.”

Hermione lay in the chair, eyes half closed and exhausted from the ordeal.

The healer pocketed his wand and turned to the watching apprentices.

Hermione looked away.

“Overstimulation has to be avoided. Do not administer the pelvic douche more often than once within twenty-four hours.”

A blonde witch lay in a bath tub next to the hydrotherapy chair. The tub was sealed off with a sturdy canvas cover, which only left her head exposed and above the water.

Hermione stared into her empty eyes. The lips of the blonde witch were a deep, purplish blue.


	5. Cohibeo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the darkest chapter of the story. Again, warnings apply. It is possible to read the story even if you skip over this chapter.

The keeper came back as he had promised.

“You are one of the girls they don’t hear.”

He loosened her hospital robes and pushed them down to her elbows, exposing her breasts to the cool air of the nightly ward as he had done for several nights now.

“The pure-blood girls never stay long; a week, maybe two. Then their families arrange a marriage contract and the Healers agree to outpatient treatment.”

Hermione followed his large hand as he trailed a fingertip from one tip of her breast to the other.

“You don’t have anybody to arrange a contract for you, do you?”

Fingertips grasped a pebbled nipple and gently rolled it.

“Girls never paid attention to me. I did not have the brains of the Ravenclaw boys or the looks of Cedric or the wealth of the old pure-blood families.”

The keeper, whose name Hermione still did not know, stepped to the foot of her bed and folded back the white duvet with the white, heavily starched duvet cover.

“I had nothing to offer.”

His palm slid along her calf and then her thigh. Gently, slowly, reverently.

“You never looked my way, either.”

A finger separated her nether lips.

“I understand. You had a lot on your mind, right from first year.”

He circled her clit with a light touch.

“They say never to penetrate you. You should not be aroused, they say.”

He raised his gaze to look into her eyes and inserted two fingers deeply into his mouth, bringing them back glistening with saliva.

Hermione did not dare to beg the gentle giant of a man, all alone in the silent ward.

The fingers penetrated her and stilled for a few heartbeats. Hermione could see that he had closed his eyes, relishing the wet heat at her centre in wonderment.

“I want to arouse you.”

The fingers slid back and forth.

“Am I doing this right?”

A thumb found her clit.

“You are so wet.”

His left hand tugged and tore at his light blue robes. She could not see what he was doing, but suddenly a hard, hot rod of skin-covered steel was thrust between the mattress and the iron bed frame and into her hand.

“So good.”

He covered her fingers with his hand like an iron clamp.

The thrusts of his hips came in tandem with the thrusts of his fingers into her pussy.

“Hermione!”

Wet, hot splats landed on her exposed stomach and his hand between her thighs was still.

Her hand was released from the crushing grip and he withdrew his softening cock from her.

“Did I do well?”

He tenderly stroked her sex.

“Can I arouse you?”

The duvet was placed over her legs.

“Can I satisfy you?”

He stared at the streaks of his seed marking the skin of her stomach and Vanished them with a hitch of hesitation in his voice.

“Can I bring you pleasure?”

Her hospital robes were drawn up to her neck and fastened.

“I never had something to offer, but now I have, and for you.”

He leant forward and kissed her cheek.

“I offer you freedom.”

A kiss to her other cheek where he lingered; cheek pressed to cheek, a whisper close to her ear.

“I will ask the Ministry for permission to marry you.”

Hermione could not take her eyes off his retreating back when he left the ward to continue his nightly rounds.

Somehow, she feared that his idea of freedom was quite different from hers.

***

Day was not her friend, either. Day brought Healer de Belleme and his eager students. Day brought treatment.

Day brought apprentice Healer Payne.

“Traditionally,” de Belleme paced the length of the room and turned back sharply to walk into the opposite direction, “you should never look at the pelvic region of your patient. I know that some younger colleagues do not agree.”

Draco?

“Nevertheless, I urge you to maintain the proper decorum when treating your private patients. Do maintain eye contact at all times. Payne, demonstrate.”

“Sir, there are not enough subjects.”

“Do not be ridiculous. You have your patient right in front of you!”

De Belleme motioned toward Hermione.

No!

She was still feeling numb from the earlier treatment just minutes ago.

She hardly registered as her legs were positioned.

For the first time, Healer Payne made eye contact with her.

He fumbled blindly between her thighs, concentrating hard not to break eye contact with her.

When he finally assumed a sliding movement with his hand, Hermione decided to take the risk.

“Please stop. It’s too much, too soon. Please.”

Payne froze in shock and resumed the rubbing and circling of his fingers but he stared at her in bewilderment.

“Please, it hurts.”

He did not dare to look away.

“Sir, she is begging me to stop.”

“To stop? Payne, who is the Healer? You or her? You know the clinical picture. Ignore her.”

She could feel the dreaded tears again.

De Belleme was addressing the other apprentices.

“Under no circumstances should you penetrate the patient. We are here to administer medical treatment, not to arouse the patients. Hysteria is found in particularly passionate witches. We should strive not to heighten any form of unnatural feelings.”

“Sir, I think she is in pain.”

“She can handle it! Be persistent. Play with her; vary your movements.”

Being touched was becoming increasingly torturous. Hermione could not help it. Her hips tried to jerk away at every contact.

“She is trying to evade you, Payne!”

Large hands slammed down on her hip bones and pinned her lower body to the mattress.

Her fight or flight instinct flared up brightly and she tried to struggle against the Healer only to find the hands replaced by more restraints.

“This subject has a history of trying to reject treatment. It calls for a belt and braces approach. Do not let up!”

Apprentice Healer Payne stared into Hermione’s face. She could no longer help but sob openly, knowing full well that her tears and apparent reluctance to comply with treatment would bring repercussions later on.

***

They had taken her sight.

They had taken her hearing.

They had cast a permanent Levicorpus spell and a half-hearted warming charm.

The world was dark and silent and lukewarm.

The potion in her system was effectively paralysing her, she could not even rub her fingers together in an effort to confirm that she was indeed still there.

Or was she?

How she was able to breathe and keep her heart beating was beyond any scientific explanation.

Magic was at work. The same magic that permitted her to blink and protect her eyes from drying out during... treatment.

Fighting against apprentice Healer Payne had been bad.

She had been unable to stop crying and found herself in a state that even she herself would classify as hysterical.

The memory was hazy, but Healer de Belleme had shouted and the apprentices had suddenly looked keen and hungry and had closed in on her around her bed.

After forcing several potions down her throat, her hospital bed had been wheeled into an empty room illuminated dimly with light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

Sensory deprivation.

To settle her womb.

Hermione had no sense of time, but soon after the start of what was between then and now and eternity, her skin had begun to itch.

Panicked, she had tried to flex muscles, say something, alert the fucking apprentices and the fucking medical staff supposedly monitoring them and her to the fact that she was trapped.

And that she was going insane.

Only that they were curing her of the exact same thing.

Hermione started blinking furiously.

Desperate to maintain all the control she had over her body, every blink made sure she would not fade into nothingness.

Her body wanted to hyperventilate, but the potions maintained a slow, steady inhale and exhale.

In between blinks she could now see shadowy shifting shapes above her head. Or was it underneath?

A sudden sense of vertigo made a wave of nausea gather low in her stomach, rising to her throat but unable to relieve her of the feeling of being disoriented and lost.

The world was dark and silent and lukewarm.

Were they still standing around her bed in a circle?

Did they eagerly note how often she blinked per minute on their pristine, white clipboards?

So dark and silent.

Or had they left?

Had they gone on to the next patient, or to lunch or home at the end of shift?

They would not leave her like this overnight, would they?

Was that allowed?

...

Trying to centre her energy and magical force, Hermione reached out into the dark space that was the treatment room.

Nothing.

Empty.

Alone.

Hermione closed her eyes to the blackness and pretended to be at home in her bed, after a long day researching at the Ministry.

She wanted to jerk awake, but even this was denied to her.

Had she fallen asleep or simply lost any sense of passing time?

How long had she been here?

Where was ‘here’?

Still dark and silent and lukewarm.

Her body breathed steadily.

Her arms and legs had been stretched out so they would not brush up against each other or her body.

She assumed that she was still in the same position; floating above her hospital bed in that empty, dim room.

Although it did not matter, she hoped that the bed was still underneath her body as if an object in the room could anchor her to the real world and would stop her from floating away and out of reach into the dark, still, lukewarm ocean.

Maybe she had fallen asleep again or she had lost grasp of her mind for a while.

Malfoy was standing—or floating?—next to her, looking out of proportion and larger than she remembered.

“Granger, Granger. Had I not told you that you need a man? A virile husband, engaging you twice or thrice a week.”

He shook his head in disapproval.

“And what do you do? You let your womb take over your mind, spreading your legs for all and sundry to see, making your cunt a public place.”

He raised his gaze to something or somebody at her other side.

“She calls for a belt and braces approach, Keeper. She might even need more than three sessions per week.”

“I will do my best to engage her every day,” the voice of the night-shift keeper said before he came into view.

“Good man, good man. I would even say more often than that. Mornings and evenings. Yes.”

Malfoy’s face had slowly morphed from pale to white to a greenish tinge. His eyes and mouth looked cruel and unforgiving.

“Mornings and evenings, yes sir, and more often during my nights off duty.”

The keeper had come closer and closer, his now familiar features turning into something else, something frightening.

Both Malfoy and he were now bent over her, twin pairs of Voldemort’s red eyes staring from noseless faces.

Virtually in a blink of her eye, both were gone.

Around her the still darkness persisted, but now something seemed to linger just outside her line of vision.

An evil presence, slithering along the floor, hiding under her bed that was maybe there.

Harry?

Evil curled around one leg of the bed underneath her and slid upward onto the mattress where it poised and waited. A feeling as if the warming charm had failed in between her shoulder blades and along her spine.

Mummy?

Mummy!

The world was silent and dark and lukewarm.


	6. Detrimentum

Hermione had overheard de Belleme speaking of making her a study case in a book he was writing.

He had been very pleased about the success of his sensory deprivation treatment.

Her analytical brain had reviewed each and every session with de Belleme. He had gone from the standard treatment quickly to more costly therapy. Much more costly.

Malfoy had said that he thought she was a straightforward, yet interesting case due to her heritage.

De Belleme was writing a book.

Hermione wanted to laugh and scream and thrash and bite and scratch and maybe, maybe stop breathing until everything went dark because now, now she could clearly see that she had no chance whatsoever.

The bastard was writing a bloody book.

He was going through all the possible treatments in order to record her reaction to them.

After hydrotherapy and The Treatment Room, there was little left.

Cruciology, using a spell that would send shocks through her body akin to Muggle electro shocks.

Fortunately the wizarding world had never adopted the practice of some Muggle doctors to perform lobotomies or clitoridectomies.

The mere thought of having her forehead drilled open, something shoved inside and then her frontal brain scrambled to mush made her want to scream in terror. Not that she could.

Thinking about losing the last thing that was still mostly her own, her ability to think, while being bound to a hospital bed filled her with helpless rage and fear.

After The Room, it had taken her nearly three days to find her way back into the reality of the dingy ward.

Now, the duvet was no longer enough to make her feel safe enough to go to sleep at night. It no longer shielded her against all that was bad and dark.

As a child, a friend had stayed over one night and dared her to go to sleep while letting her arm hang over the edge of the bed, down to the ground.

As soon as she had slipped her arm from underneath the duvet, the feeling of... something... underneath the bed had assaulted her fingers, sending nervous tingles from her fingertips into her hand.

She had been sure that everything would be all right, that she would be safe, if she could just take her arm back to the warm safety underneath her cover.

Sleep had evaded her for hours that night.

Now, once again, Hermione felt as exposed as her arm back then. Her bed in the middle of the ward awarded her no shelter.

She longed for the freedom of the straightjacket. She wanted to be able to get up and huddle in a corner as the woman from the bed next to her did some of the nights.

The keeper had been back every night, but she was unable to process what he told her. He had seen the condition she was in and had patiently massaged feeling back into her arms and legs.

Hermione had been hypersensitive to gentle and even faint touches, but the firm massage of the keeper had finally overcome that and made her feel that she was still there.

He was back again and smiled a wide smile that made dimples appear in his fleshy cheeks.

“You are better tonight.”

He smoothed her hair away from her forehead and sat down on a chair near the head of the bed.

Her hair had become so matted after so many days—how many days?—in bed without her wide-toothed comb and so many futile, impatient attempts of the nurses to disentangle the knotted locks with magic, that there was now talk of cutting her hair very short; even shaving her head.

The keeper pulled out a comb from his pocket and carefully separated one thin strand of hair from the tangles.

The comb was a man’s comb and not very well-suited for her kind of hair, but he worked patiently and gently from the tips, slowly, slowly up to the root.

When one strand was silky and smooth to the touch, he would place it on her shoulder and separate the next strand for him to work on.

The pale light of dawn was already creeping into the dark greys of the ward at night, when he was finally able to run the comb through her hair without meeting any knots or tangles.

He gathered half of her hair to each side of her head and began to braid them with concentration written all over his large face.

“My aunt taught me to braid hair. She always wanted her hair braided before she went to bed, because it would get so tangled at night otherwise.”

He secured the ends of the braids with short lengths of cotton gauze.

“I have all the papers now, Hermione.”

He stood from his chair as noises announced the hospital waking for the day.

“Today I will go to make an appointment, so I can submit my application for a marriage contract.”

He bent down and brushed the lightest of kisses against her cheek.

“Soon I can take you home.”

***

The following day, the girl in the bed next to Hermione’s had been taken away.

When she was told that she would be released, she had stood and clutched her little satchel that she always had prepared and peered around the Healer and nurses, searching the ward.

“Daddy?”

The Healer did not look up from the parchmentwork on his clipboard.

“Your father has signed a contract for you. You will go home with your husband today. Congratulations.”

A middle-aged wizard stepped forward. He was clad in expensive, midnight blue robes and was carrying a cane not unlike the one Hermione had noticed on Lucius Malfoy whenever she had seen the wizard.

The man placed the handle of his cane underneath the girl’s chin and made her look up at him.

For several heartbeats, the wizard looked at his newly acquired wife as if he was considering the worth of a costly purchase.

Obviously satisfied with the goods, he turned to the Healer.

“Where do I sign?”

The Healer pointed to a place on the parchment that was topmost on the clipboard and handed a quill to the girl’s husband.

The wizard then took the girl’s arm without further acknowledging her and steered her out of the ward.

At the door the girl turned, her braids making her look younger than ever.

“Daddy?”

She was jolted through the door and out of the ward, but Hermione could hear another, louder ‘Daddy’ before the door closed behind them.

The Healer gestured toward the bed and instructed the nurse while exiting the ward.

“Get that stripped and changed, will you?”

Hermione watched the bed next to hers being divested of its linen and remade in a matter of minutes. In the end, a clean sheet was spread over the entire bed to protect it from being soiled before the next occupant arrived.

When would the keeper stand next to de Belleme to take her... home?

***

A larger piece of rubber was inserted into her mouth, forcing her to bite down on it.

The matron checked the position of Hermione’s head and made sure that all restraints held tight.

Cruciology.

Nearly the end of the broomstick.

Although wizardkind had not resorted to removing hysterical witches’ brains or genitals, as had been customary in the Muggle world at a time, they had not stopped at settling a disturbed womb by extracting it from the body.

This morning, de Belleme had lectured his students on the progression of her treatment.

“If she does not take well to cruciology, we will have to consider a hysterectomy,” he had said, standing directly in front of her.

One of the nurses had looked at Hermione with startled eyes and seen it, finally seen it.

The overwhelming, impotent fear.

Images flashed through Hermione’s mind, assaulting her.

A tiny hand on her breast, trustingly relaxed because there was food and warmth and mummy’s smell.

Little, bushy-haired know-it-alls that would drive her up the wall with questions.

Hermione closed her eyes and a tear trickled down her temple and into her braided hair.

Cradling the warm, tiny body of a baby in her arms -- so frail, so light, so precious.

Resting her cheek on a warm, fuzzy head, nestled to her chest.

Healing a chafed knee.

Reading her favourite stories to an older child before bedtime.

Seeing the Hogwarts Express leave Kings Cross Station, an excited eleven-year-old on board. Her excited eleven-year-old.

Please don’t take them away from me.

The Healer pointed his wand at her and incanted the spell that made Hermione arch off the bed instantly.

Every single muscle in her body seized up painfully, her teeth dug into the rubber thing in her mouth and her neck felt as if it would break from the strain.

De Belleme held the spell.

Stop!

He cocked his head to observe a trail of saliva run out of the corner of her mouth.

Please stop...

Just before she felt as if her body might give out under the force of the shock, he ended it.

Her back hit the mattress with a thud and she panted through her nose.

Just tell me what you want me to do so you can believe that I am getting better.

“Ereptio.”

This time, her muscles did not release when he ended the spell and in the end, the counter curse needed to be cast before her muscles would snap her bones like brittle twigs.

She kept her eyes closed when she was back in the ward. The muscles behind her eyeballs were restlessly twitching back and forth, unable to focus on her favourite crack in the ceiling above her bed.

Even the smallest of muscles were shaking and cramping uncontrollably in the after-effects of cruciology.

The raw rings around wrists and ankles chafed and rubbed against the restraints with every involuntary shudder.

She could hear the door open at the other end of the ward. Unhurried footsteps very loud in her ears echoed through the relative stillness of afternoon nap time. Many of the patients were subdued by potions to free some time in the nurse’s schedule. Hermione had not been sent to this suffocating place of forced stillness. Her tortured, no, treated brain would have shut down under the heavy sedatives.

The footsteps halted not far from her bed for several heartbeats and Hermione wondered whether that was a long or short time because even her heart was erratic, never settling into a steady beat.

A warm, gentle hand pulled her eyelid open toward her brow.

Her eye hastily moved from side to side, making it impossible to look past the hand at the face of her visitor.

“Granger?”

She knew that voice from somewhere. Trying to remember took so much effort and hurt.

“Granger, can you hear me?”

Her muscles jerked her entire body in her bed. Had he asked something or was she still receiving treatment?

The hands left her face and the footsteps moved away from her, to the foot of her bed. The telltale sound of her file being removed from the pouch fixed to the frame and then rustling parchments, sometimes rapidly flipped-through, then with longer pauses.

A soft curse and something was thrown on top of the duvet into the vee-shaped space between her legs. The steps left the ward and the silence returned.

Hermione was not sure whether those steps had ever been real, drifting in and out of dreams as she was, but after some time they returned with a new urgency and purpose in their pace.

“Granger? Granger, I need you to relax your jaw muscles.”

Careful fingers moved along her neck and jaw, massaging and stroking.

The bit was removed from in between her clenching teeth.

“Can you swallow?” A few drops of a viscose potion were poured into her mouth and Hermione instinctively closed her mouth and swallowed.

“Good girl. Good, good girl.”

The voice sounded relieved.

After a few minutes, the horrible twitching and cramping of her muscles slowed, became less severe until it died down to an occasional contraction of her fingers.

“Look at me Granger.”

Hermione made the effort to open her eyes, because the voice was friendly and had praised her when she did as it said.

Draco Malfoy was leaning over her.

Hermione smiled.

Draco Malfoy dreams were the best ones.

“I am hallucinating,” she said happily, “again?”

A slight frown creased his forehead.

“You have been hallucinating?”

“They say so, so it must be true. I am not well, you see? They will make me better, they say.”

Malfoy closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, he looked inexplicably sad.

“What happened, Granger? Why are you here?”

He tucked a curl that had escaped her braids behind her ear. She leaned into the warmth of his palm and he allowed it.

“Your hands are soft and gentle.”

She smiled, ignoring his question.

“I tried to think about your hands when they hurt me.”

The hand on her cheek tensed minutely.

“They hurt you?”

She leaned into his palm.

“This hallucination is much better than the others.”

The warmth of his hand stayed with her for a few more moments and then dissipated as she slipped away into sleep. The mirage might have said something before turning fuzzy and dissolving into mist.


	7. Semotus

The hallucination came back. He came back.

That was strange.

Or maybe she had come back from wherever it was she had drifted off to.

Malfoy was standing next to her bed, wearing the same white healer’s robes he had worn every time she had seen him since she had become his patient. His hair looked slightly out of order, as if he had raked his fingers through it repeatedly. That was also strange.

But then, hallucinating about Malfoy was strange in itself. It made her nervous.

“Granger? Can you hear me?”

Hermione looked at him, uncertain as to how she should respond. She tried a small nod, completely forgetting that he had removed the bit from her mouth.

He reached for the leather binding at her right-hand wrist.

And removed it.

Hermione lay frozen in the afternoon-nap silence, her breath coming in short pants.

This was new.

New was a scary, frightful thing. New usually meant bad.

The hallucination seemed oblivious to her distress and ploughed on, pushing her into a state of petrified anticipation.

“I need you to sign this, Granger. Now.” He was glancing around very quickly, as if he expected someone to come in and interrupt.

She felt something vaguely familiar pressed into her unbound hand. Her fingers tested the textures of feathers and shaft.

How cruel.

She closed her hand around the quill, nearly breaking it with white-knuckled force.

Still her hand rested on top of the opened leather strap in its position near the metal bed frame.

“Granger, we do not have much time. If you want me to help you, you need to sign this.”

With slow, stilted movements she lifted the quill to the parchment that Malfoy held out in front of her.

For a few heartbeats she feared that she had forgotten how to sign her own name.

But the quill moved in an automatic, practiced motion that seemed to come straight from her subconscious.

Malfoy released the breath he had been holding with relief, and stowed the newly signed parchment in his white healer’s robes.

She let her hand fall back onto the duvet, and fully expected the binding to wind itself around her wrist again and for Malfoy to vanish, leaving her alone in the quiet ward once more.

Instead, he swiftly moved to the foot of her bed and undid the straps at her ankles, then her left wrist.

Hermione had to close her eyes. Everything was so confusing.

Malfoy peeled back the duvet. The difference this time being that he did not fold it back simply to reveal her lower body. This time it was almost completely removed. She was fully bared, with the duvet left covering only the very tips of her toes.

The lack of instruction was extremely unsettling to her. Usually they told her what position to get into as soon as the obstruction of the duvet had gone. Hermione squinted at Malfoy, the urge to draw the duvet back on top of her ever mounting.

Deciding that the best course of action was to mimic the other times healers had come to her, Hermione bent her legs at the knee and let them fall apart.

Closing her eyes she waited for something to happen; a touch; the vibration of a wand; the probing of her sex. Anything to set her back in familiar territory.

When for a long time nothing happened, she opened her eyes again. Maybe he had gone to get... instruments?

Malfoy was still standing at her bedside looking at her, his expression solemn.

Meeting her gaze, he gently pushed her legs closed.

“I do not think that is necessary at the moment.”

Her face must have shown her confusion because he did not dwell on the subject. He simply slipped one arm under her bent knees and the other under her shoulders and hoisted her up with a small grunt.

Reality crashed down on Hermione with the force of a collapsing building, only in reverse. It was like life was reassembling itself around her; the knowledge that she was actually lucid; that Draco Malfoy was truly with her, carrying her. Carrying her where, though? She hardly cared. Realisations built themselves up like bricks. Walls were falling into place to construct a new world.

Malfoy was carrying her toward the double-winged doors of the ward. Any second, she would be out of this place. Having spent much of her stay unconscious, she had never seen what was behind these doors.

It suddenly occurred to her that her knee-length hospital robe had an open back and its sides were hanging freely. She was bare underneath.

At a time like this it was indeed ridiculous to feel shame or be concerned about propriety, but she did fear what may lie beyond the doors to the ward. Her mind constantly conjured images of busy corridors or even rows of desks for administrators and doctors alike.

Maybe that little glimmer of hope that was growing stronger and stronger inside her would be snuffed when she arrived at just another treatment room for yet another round of therapy. Taking a fistful of white healer’s robes she turned her face into Malfoy’s shoulder, grateful that he wasn’t levitating her stiff as a board in front of him.

The sound of a hurriedly pushed-back chair scratching over the cold stone floor made her peek from her hiding place.

She found herself in a small ante room that housed a lone desk with a filing cabinet next to it, and a startled nurse who was now standing in surprise at their appearance, wringing her hands.

“Healer Malfoy! What are you doing?”

Malfoy stopped abruptly and awkwardly levitated the signed parchment from his pocket to mid-air. Another spell duplicated the document once, then again, and had both copies zooming forward; one smacking the startled nurse in the chest, the other filing itself into the light gray metal filing cabinet behind her.

“Miss Granger has sought me out in regard to alternative treatment. I am transferring her to my clinic with immediate effect.”

The nurse’s eyes shifted nervously between Malfoy, the witch he was carrying and the door to the ward.

“But healer de Belleme... hasn’t he... she is a Ministry ward, isn’t she?”

Malfoy obviously did not want to waste any more time and started to walk through the ante room toward another set of doors.

“You will find that she is not. Check the documents, call healer de Belleme if you wish; I haven’t got time to linger.”

No! Not de Belleme, not now that hope had just started to timidly blossom.

She must have tensed at the possibility that the nurse might indeed send for the sadistic healer. In response, Malfoy started to draw tiny little circles on her shoulder.

Hermione could hear the nurse hurry after them, spluttering in indignation.

“But you must wait! Healer de Belleme is at a press conference for the announcement of his new book! I have no means of reaching him for another hour or so!”

Malfoy turned sharply and Hermione dug her nails deeper into his robes.

“Is he now? How very... unfortunate. Do give him my regards. He may call on me during surgery hours.”

As he turned again, Hermione felt a surge of magic release and the doors to the ante room burst apart, hitting the walls of the corridor with a bang.

Malfoy moved quickly. Striding forward, he did not stop for anyone, even when they called out to him.

Hermione was acutely aware of the air swirling over her bare skin beneath the open hospital robes, a spectacle on display for anyone who happened to pass them.

Malfoy stopped and adjusted her weight in his arms.

“Granger,” he whispered. “I need to put you down for a second. I can’t throw Floo powder into the hearth while holding you.”

She nodded into his shoulder and he lowered her feet to the cold ground. His hand drew her robes together at her back and steadied her in a discreet way as the fire flared green.

“Malfoy Manor, clinic reception,” he announced clearly.

Just as they stepped through, Hermione saw a burly man with a bouquet of flowers in his hands at the other side of the Floo room. His slightly out-of-date formal tweed robes were stretched taut over his chest, several buttons straining desperately against every breath.

Their eyes locked for a nanosecond. Flowers fell from his grasp, rose petals like blood spilling across the polished marble of the floor.

Like so many times before in his life, the keeper had been too late.

***

Stepping through the Floo was like stepping through the looking glass into a parallel world.

A bright reception room with several comfortable-looking arm chairs, a fireplace tall enough to Floo in and out upright, and a wide honey-coloured desk revealed itself as they stepped out. A nurse, who had been busy writing in an open file, stood at their entry.

“Helia, Miss Granger has transferred to us as of today. A copy of her file should be arriving within the next few minutes. Is room five available?”

“Yes, healer Malfoy. Should I...”

“That will not be necessary,” he cut her off. “I’ll take care of it.”

He took a few steps in the direction of a door but then stopped and turned back.

“Helia, Miss Granger’s former healer might not be too pleased about the transfer, please cancel all appointments for today and secure the entrances and all Floos.”

With that he once more approached the tall, white door, opening automatically in front of him to let him pass.

After a short walk, another door opened for them and he lowered her onto a hospital bed not unlike the one she had escaped minutes earlier.

This room had little in common with the forgotten ward at St. Mungo’s; the walls were a pristine white and sunshine streamed through a tall window to the side

But it was a hospital room nonetheless.

Malfoy busied himself with pouring a liquid into a shallow metal bowl of sorts, like the ones she used to see on Muggle hospital programmes.

“This is a healing potion for the skin chafings,” he explained. Short lengths of thickly folded cotton-gauze compresses were immersed in the bright orange liquid. Malfoy lifted one of her hands and turned it a little to see all of the damage. “It will not hurt.” Slowly, so as not to frighten her, he covered the inflamed area, and wound some more gauze loosely around the treated wrist.

She did not say anything, did not protest or question his actions, but her eyes never left him as he proceeded to move to one of her ankles now.

“No questions, Granger? You are scaring me.”

The teasing question was meant to brighten the mood, but the lack of any lightness in his tone betrayed the truth in his words.

Hermione did not know what he wanted her to say so she stayed silent, staring at him all the while and trying to read his intentions.

After a few moments he averted his eyes and went on to the next ankle.

He seemed to take a long time, treating her wounds meticulously.

When her left wrist was wrapped in gauze, Malfoy straightened and trained his eyes on a point above her shoulder before forcing his gaze to her eyes.

“Will you let me examine you? A nurse can be present if you wish.”

She shook her head; there had already been too many spectators. Hermione drew up her knees and opened up. For a while nothing happened, then she heard Malfoy clear his throat.

“Right.”

She could hear the telltale sounds of thin latex gloves being snapped on and fingertips touched her very, very lightly.

She could not prevent the automatic flinch and he immediately withdrew.

“It is not as bad as I had feared. This is very good news. Has somebody been giving you aftercare?”

At first her voice did not work.

“A night keeper. He... did things.”

At last she dared to look up into his face and saw that he had gone very pale and expressionless.

Things.

Oh gods.

“Would you like a bath?”

Blue lips.

A canvas cover making escape impossible.

Cold water numbing her skin.

He seemed to read her thoughts as he hurriedly amended.

“A warm bath with healing potions. And bubbles. Would you like bubbles?”

At that she smiled; an unpractised expression.

“I would like bubbles very much.”

***

Later she was warm and dry, dressed in a nightgown that actually had a back, and drowsy from the cup of chicken soup that had been waiting for her on her bedside cabinet when she returned from the bath.

The nurse bustled around the room, drawing curtains, collecting instruments, and helping her lifting her legs into the bed before tucking the duvet around Hermione.

Malfoy stood near the doorway, fidgeting and opening his mouth several times as if to speak but each time thinking better of it.

Finally the nurse was standing in the doorway, waiting for the healer to leave so she could turn out the lights.

“Good night, Granger. If you need anything, anything at all, call me straight away.”

Hermione nodded mutely. He had shown her the small globe at her bedside that she only needed to touch to set off an alarm that would summon the healer to her. She had immediately recognised it as similar to the one de Belleme had touched that very first day in his office.

She would not touch it if she could help it.

“Right.”

Malfoy fidgeted again while the nurse waited patiently, but she was starting to draw her eyebrows together in a frown.

“Right,” he repeated and turned to leave. Nearly out of the door, he turned back to Hermione. “We will talk in the morning. After breakfast.”

The light extinguished and the door closed.

The pale blue curtains let some of the moonlight filter into the silent room, her breathing loud. The night was not her friend.

Very slowly, Hermione moved her arms and legs so her ankles and wrists touched the bedframe.


	8. Forfex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There is a last bit of potentially (really) disturbing content at the end of this chapter!

A shadow moved next to her bed. Hermione was certain that she had seen it out of the corner of her eye. But now... The darkness painted patterns on the walls and twisted innocent objects into hunched figures and tall wizards in Healer's robes hiding behind the curtains and wardrobes.

Hermione bit her lip hard, fighting to contain her instinct to run. Running would only make it worse.

I am safe.

Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she slid her feet to the floor and stood, wobbling slightly. A few steps to the wardrobe; just a shadow.

Her heart was beating as if it would break out of her chest.

One more step.

She leaned her forehead against the smooth wood of the piece of furniture. A bathrobe hung from a hook at the side of the wardrobe. Only a bathrobe.

With determination she moved to the window, ignoring all of the suspicious shapes around her and threw the curtains aside. The clear night revealed towels draped over a chair and a vase with a tasteful arrangement of winter greens.

The staccato of her heart did not slow; she felt the urge to breathe rapidly to compensate.

No longer forced to wait out the night in her bed, she drew the duvet from it and made a nest in the far corner of the room. Huddled in its warmth she could oversee the entire room. For a short time the clear glass globe on her bedside cabinet caught her eye. No, she would not use it. Never. Finally feeling secure enough to close her eyes, she rested her head against the cool wall.

***

"Good morning, Miss Granger. Would you like breakfast?"

The nurse stopped abruptly and fled from the room in a panic. Bleary with sleep, Hermione could hear her shouting for Healer Malfoy.

Oh no. It was not allowed to not sleep in the bed? She fought to disentangle her limbs, stiff from sleeping in such an uncomfortable position. Maybe she could make it to the bed before they came for her.

She was only a few steps away from the hardly-slept in bed when she heard them.

"Have you even checked the bathroom?"

"Malfoy, if you lost her..."

The second voice left the threat unspoken. It sounded familiar.

"Hermione?"

Harry had appeared in the doorway, shouting her name. She let the duvet fall to the ground and walked straight into his arms.

He held her close, burying his face in the hair on top of her head.

"Thank Merlin you are here."

She did not answer, but burrowed deeper into his chest.

"I couldn't find you. I am so sorry."

She shook her head no into his robes and clung to him.

His hand left her back and stroked her hair tenderly.

"Would you like to dress? I brought some of your things."

Dress?

Hermione looked up, enjoying the sight of his gentle face.

"Yes, please."

Malfoy had lingered in the background, nodding to her once in greeting then appearing very busy scratching away on a whole stack of parchments. After a few minutes he had announced that he would be back later, sounding very relieved to make his exit.

She sat at the edge of the bed and watched him unpack the small trunk. Several comfortable sets of trousers and pullovers, comfy tracksuit bottoms and fuzzy socks went into the wardrobe. He fumbled a bit with her underwear but managed bravely to pile knickers and bras onto the boards. A few books that she remembered had been stacked near her bed in her flat were now piled on her bedside cabinet and the small table near the window.

Having Harry here made her feel connected to the world. A long time seemed to have passed.

He excused himself with a small kiss on her head, giving her privacy to change.

The simple task was exhausting. Her feet fought their way into the legs of the tracksuit bottoms, getting stuck and tangled more than once. Closing her bra in front was easy but moving the clasp to her back took considerably more strength than she remembered. Pulling the warm pullover over her head had her sweating and longing for a nap.

She had to sit on the edge of the bathtub to brush her teeth and remained on the toilet much longer than necessary, cold sweat on her brow.

When she made it to the door, which she found was not locked, she felt weak and her legs trembled with relief.

"You okay?"

She nodded. Harry pushed himself off the wall and offered her his arm.

"I think Malfoy has breakfast ready. There is some stuff I need to tell you about."

"Stuff" that she needed to hear about sitting down? Hermione took Harry's arm and let him lead her to a small conference room with a rectangular table that was partly laden with breakfast foods. Eggs and grilled tomatoes, mushrooms and baked beans, toast, butter, jam and marmalade, steaming tea, bangers and fried bread, cornflakes and fresh milk. The multitude of aromas was as enticing as it was overwhelming and revolting.

She swallowed hard and swayed a little.

Malfoy quickly stood to cast a diagnostic charm and nodded encouragingly.

"All in the normal range."

"Er, could we maybe get rid of the sausage and eggs?" she asked in a barely controlled voice as her stomach threatened to heave any second.

Malfoy went back to the papers strewn over the non-breakfast half of the table.

"Elf."

A goggle-eyed creature appeared with a crack, took the two dishes without asking and disappeared the same way from the room.

Instantly able to breathe easier, Hermione sat down in front of one of the plate settings and looked at the still-heaped food in front of her. Harry had taken the place next to her and Malfoy moved to the one directly across. She tried not to look at Harry's plate that was already brimming with food.

Slowly, slowly, she told herself and reached for the mushroom dish.

Malfoy vaguely gestured to the serving bowls.

"The elves tend to go a bit overboard. You should start with light food after all that nutrition potion; don't want to overtax your system. Better stay clear of the fried bread, but toast should be all right." Her face fell and he smiled a small smile. "And the other things, too, as long as you take small portions."

Hermione nodded and selected one mushroom and one grilled tomato. Warm breakfast was just too tempting. She was only vaguely aware that Harry and Malfoy were talking in hushed voices between bites. Buttering her toast took all her attention.

She had forgotten that anything could taste as good as toast with butter and jam. The tomato and mushroom were gone much too fast and she decided to take a risk with a small spoonful of baked beans.

Bliss.

Leaning back in her chair she turned to the two men at the table.

"Better tell me the things you need to tell me before I fall asleep."

Harry looked at Malfoy a bit uneasily and nodded.

They moved to the other side of the table with their teacups, while the elves instantly cleared breakfast away. Hermione felt a bit sorry to see the mushrooms go.

"Granger, the transfer to my clinic was successful; there is not much that can be done to reverse this."

Not much?

"That does not mean that de Belleme is not trying. I will not lie to you. The good news is that he did not complete the process of making you a Ministry ward. The bad news is that he, or somebody of his staff, I suppose, has leaked your name to the Daily Prophet."

Harry slid a folded copy of the wizarding newspaper over to her, looking worried.

Hermione flipped it open so the front page became visible.

War Heroine Threatened by Insanity

Acclaimed specialist and Head Healer of ward three and a half at St. Mungo"s Hospital for Magical Maladies, Simon de Belleme, has the medical community aflutter with news of his new book based on the rare case of a Muggle-born witch, exhibiting the symptoms of Witches' Hysteria.

His research is supposed to be groundbreaking in his field, as Witches' Hysteria was believed to be primarily found in pureblood witches and rarely in Half-bloods.

The most successful way to counteract the affliction's effects has traditionally been marriage, as it is most commonly found in unmarried witches.

Head Healer de Belleme was not available to supply us with more details or the name of the unfortunate Muggle-born witch, citing Healer-patient confidentiality, but an anonymous source confirms that none other than war heroine Hermione Granger had been committed to ward three and a half for nearly two weeks, receiving extensive treatment for Witches' Hysteria.

Hermione Granger is already in her mid-twenties and still unmarried. All hopes for a marriage between her and fellow war hero Ronald Weasley had been thwarted when the witch broke their engagement some six months ago.

This again is evidence for the validity of the old customs of our world. Muggle-born witches tend to be the ones in our community to marry the latest, which seems to be a dangerous practice.

With our community decimated by war, can we afford to let our witches go unmarried and thus be subject to debilitating ailments that could easily have them slip into insanity? Voices of the community are demanding a solution to this problem in the form of instruction in wizarding culture for Muggle-born or Muggle-raised witches and Ministry-organised marriage contracts.

Will it all be too late for our beloved war heroine? Fear not, dear readers! It is said that a valiant pureblood wizard has taken it on himself to rescue the deeply troubled witch. An application for a marriage contract has been submitted to the Ministry and is awaiting approval. The Daily Prophet will report on any development in the case.

Please see our special report on Witches' Hysteria Symptoms and Treatment in tomorrow's edition.

Rita Skeeter

A picture of her leaving the Ministry accompanied the article. She shouldered open the doors with too many files in her arms, a heavy bag weighing down one of her shoulders making her appear lopsided. Lifting one of her arms as far as the files would let her, she tried to rub her tired and stressed face on her robes. She remembered that she had had a migraine that day, a splitting headache that made her vision swim and her steps unsteady. And it showed.

"We were not engaged," she said numbly.

"Granger," Malfoy said very carefully. "That is not really the most important part of this."

She came out of her stupor like from a long underwater swim.

"Everybody has read this. Everybody. My boss, my colleagues, my landlord..."

Harry took her hand in both of his.

"Hermione, St. Mungo's informed your head of department as soon as you were admitted. You are suspended indefinitely for medical reasons."

"Indefinitely..."

Harry's thumb drew small circles on the back of her hand.

"How will I earn my living? How will I ever find another job after being publicly declared insane? How will I ever face anyone?"

Both Malfoy and Harry looked at each other and then at the surface of the tabletop.

"Oh gods, what else?"

"That marriage contract; the Ministry owled me this morning. They are requesting a survey report on whether you are fit for marriage or not. Does the name Isidor Trebetarry mean anything to you? He appears to work the night shift as an auxiliary care wizard on ward three and a half."

Her breath hitched.

"A virile man, who would engage me at least twice a week?" she quoted him and in her head the Keeper's voice echoed from her time in The Treatment Room. Mornings and evenings, yes sir, and more often during my nights off duty. Her stomach revolted against the unacustomed breakfast.

Malfoy was gracious enough to look guilty and rested his forehead in his hand.  
Harry turned to him with a sharp movement.

"What?"

"Calm down, Potter. I had merely stated what I would have suggested in the case of a pureblood family. Essentially, this is probably our biggest problem. The Ministry wants this solved. A quick marriage would take care of it nicely."

Hermione had gone very pale.

"But I thought I am not a Ministry ward."

"You also don't have a male blood relative, who could take on the guardianship, should the Ministry not be satisfied that you are fit to make decisions."

"That's... barbaric. I will leave. Go to the Muggle world then."

Malfoy snorted.

"Right, Granger. The Ministry would just let you go, believing you volatile and ready to turn insane at any minute."

"This is it then? Some wizard will come for me, inspect my teeth and the width of my hips for breeding purposes and all he has to do to drag me off to wherever, is sign a bloody Ministry parchment? Which century is this?"

"Calm down, Granger. Nobody is signing for you just yet. I will not declare you fit for marriage as long as I can possibly delay it. It will hopefully buy us some time. Time to fight this."

Harry reached for her trembling hand that did not quite want to lay still on the table's surface.

"I'll marry you."

She took his hand in both of hers and smiled a watery smile.

"You are engaged to Ginny."

Harry leaned over with conviction, his hand holding hers in a firm grip.

"I will marry you."

"I will not let them ruin three more lives."

"Three?"

"Yours, Ginny's and maybe when, one day, I meet somebody I would have liked to share my life with..."

Harry hung his head.

She stood, face halfway averted from the men at the table.

"I don't think I will be ready for a relationship, let alone a marriage any time soon. I don't want... I can't..." She swallowed and her eyes grew wide in an effort to stop the tears. "Don't let them touch me." She fled.

Hermione only ran around the corner, feeling exhausted from excitement, walking around and eating solid food. Heavily leaning on the wall in the corridor, she breathed heavily trying to calm herself.

She could hear that next door a chair was pushed back and then Malfoy's voice.

"No, let her be for a moment. Tell me, have your solicitors started working on countering this?"

There was a pause in which Harry must have been debating whether to follow her or not.

"Yes, they have. They say we might be able to settle outside of the Wizengamot. What about the medical side of things? And no sugar-coating, Malfoy!"

"Honestly, I don"t know how long our diversion tactics will work. Both de Belleme and Trebetarry are working furiously on recovering her." He sighed. "I am not so concerned about de Belleme; he was sloppy in his paperwork and that's that. Doesn't stop him from causing a public scandal, though. The marriage contract is the real threat. With," Draco swallowed hard, "two experts confirming the diagnosis, it will be nigh impossible to convince the Wizengamot otherwise. If I go back on my initial assessment now, after she transferred to my clinic for alternative hysteria treatment... I am afraid all we would accomplish is that they call in additional experts, who, of course, would all be very eager to examine her. In the end, Trebetarry may still seem the perfect, quick and public relations-effective solution. Pureblood marries Muggle-born witch to safe her from insanity."

Harry was very pale.

"Fuck."

"Indeed."

***

"Malfoy did not tell me what exactly happened in that so-called ward; he just said it was really, really bad. If you ever want to talk to me, even at half three in the morning, I want you to promise me that you will do it." She looked away. "Please."

Harry tried one more time.

"Please say something. I will not let anything bad happen to you."

Hermione smiled a pained smile and cupped his cheek. She wanted to be alone. It was already dusky outside.

Helia, the nurse, was standing in the background with a tray of gauze, ointment and instruments in her hands, waiting for Harry to leave.

Harry only left the room reluctantly, promising to come back the day after tomorrow with news from his solicitors.

Helia chattered away as she changed the bandages around her wrists and ankles. Reciting every article in the current edition of Witch Weekly. Hermione learned that Blaise Zabini was single again and had once more obtained the top position of most eligible bachelor when Helia jerked upright and threw the strips of gauze and the jar of ointment on her tray before nearly running out of the room, alerted by some kind of silent alarm.

Hermione nearly called after her when she realised that the nurse had left her scissors behind on the bedside cabinet.

***

She would not let them.

Never again.

The moonlight cast a cold gleam on the scissors on her bedside cabinet. Hermione saw her hand reaching out and closing around the instrument. As if in a dream, she could see herself moving but was unable or unwilling to interfere.

With unhurried steps she moved to the window and knelt down on the hard stone floor. When she leant back she could see the large, silvery-white moon in a piece of clear night sky between the spidery black outline of tall, old trees. It was a moon promising frost on the lawns and branches in the morning.

Pretty.

Thinking of snow that might fall soon, Hermione drew her nightgown up over her thighs to her waist until the frill at the hem rested near her hip.

Exhaling, she slid two fingers of her left hand in between her legs.

She had been hesitant to touch, convinced she would not be able to bear it. Relief made her breathe deeply. It was no different from touching her earlobe.

Bright stars twinkled through the bare branches outside.

Her fingertips slid over her smooth mound. Was that charm that Malfoy had employed so long ago permanent? Or had it been renewed at the ward? She explored the fleshy parts at the top of her sex.

There.

There it was.

She used her other fingers to spread herself, the little nub exposed by her position.

A second.

A second and it would all be over.

Safe.

Just a second.

She knew she would not pause in her movement once in motion. The scissors securely in her hand she brought it between her legs.

The metal was cold on her skin but warmed quickly.

The shears opened effortlessly and she fumbled a bit to find the right angle for its blades.

A gust of wind made the branches outside the window sway and had the stars blinking in and out of existence with their movement.

A second.

She brought the scissors closer to her body.

Such a pretty night.

A hand clamped down over the open blades of the scissors, holding them firmly apart before yanking her arm up high.

Another hand closed over her wrist, holding her arm stretched as far from her body as possible while the scissors were wrenched from her and thrown to the far end of the room.

Stunned, she let both her arms be pinned closely to her chest as the hand was thrust between her thighs, fingers searching frantically.

Finding her whole, Draco's body behind her went slack.

"Oh, thank Merlin."

She could feel his forehead on her shoulder, quick, sharp breaths against the cotton of her nightgown.

"Thank Merlin."

Now both arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her closely to him.

"There is always, always an alternative."

At least he did not ask "why". She felt his arms tighten.

"I do not want to restrain you."

"If you can't be my Healer anymore, where will you send me?"


	9. Luctuosa

He seemed to be stunned into silence.

“I will not send you anywhere.”

“Then where will the Ministry send me when they pull you off my case?”

There was no indication that he had heard her and she was about to repeat her question more forcefully when he spoke.

“That will not happen. I won’t let it. The Malfoy name still carries a certain weight. The Ministry will be very sorry if they decide to go to war against me.”

Her lips were a bit dry and she started biting at the already chapped skin until she could taste blood.

“I am afraid to be alone with myself.”

Malfoy looked down at her, at her closed up face, her arms constricted by his own hands and the nightgown still draped around her waist.

He suddenly seemed to have made a decision and stood, pulling her to her feet along with him. He picked her up and walked briskly out of the room. Being carried around by Malfoy seemed to be becoming a common occurrence, but Hermione found she did not mind. His shoulder was comfortable to lean on and her still unsteady feet would have made her stumble after him at best.

Soon, there was a marked difference in the corridors’ appearance. Gone were the white, plastered walls and the seamless stone floors. Now Malfoy was walking on thick carpets that masked his footsteps and sleepy portraits lined the panelled walls.

This part of the house appeared older, the hallway bending at odd angles, rooms branching off it in random intervals. It was much more secluded than the broad, light paths through the clinic.

Malfoy nudged a wooden door open and a single candle sprang to life, illuminating rich fabric covered armchairs, sofas and dressed windows. A large four poster bed stood in the middle, reminding her of Hogwarts; the hospital room a far cry from this country house splendour.

He lowered her to the edge of the high bed and waved his wand in a high arc, making magic encompass the room. Several small objects vanished but it happened too fast for Hermione to see what was being taken away.

Malfoy looked uncomfortable.

“Standard anti-self-harm charms. Sorry.”

Hermione bit her lip.

“No, that’s okay. I understand. Is that how you knew when to... stop me?”

He nodded.

“This room won’t so much remind you of a hospital; I thought you might sleep better here.”

He folded back the bedspread and the duvet underneath. A bit shaky, she crawled into the spot he indicated.

“I will leave a house elf to watch over you.”

Hermione sat up, wide-eyed and shook her head.

A frown creased his forehead.

“Should I call a nurse then?”

Again she shook her head.

“Please don’t tell anybody else!”

She extended her hand as if she wanted to hold him back, stop him from leaving. For long moments Malfoy looked uncertain and torn.

“Alright.”

Then he toed off his slippers and arranged his bathrobe tighter around his body.

Malfoy spread the duvet over her and waited for her to roll to her side before lying down next to her on top of the comforter. He slung his arm over her waist and stilled.

Hermione could hear his breathing; steady but not deep enough to signal sleep. His arm on her did not frighten her or make her uncomfortable.

If she could endure a man near her, she wondered what else was possible for her. Tentatively, she tried to ease her mind into a fantasy.

Light touches.

Whispered words.

A faceless man above her, kissing... rutting, thrusting, stabbing her.

Imprisoned on her back, her legs wide...

No!

Hermione snapped her eyes open, taking in the quiet room, the window with the serene night sky, this view unobscured by trees. Her heart beat fast in her chest, making each breath a little victory.

Malfoy must have felt her jerk beneath the covers, lost in her imagination. He tightened his arm around her and moved a little closer.

“This is highly unethical,” he spoke into the darkness of the room.

Her own turmoil and the abruptness of the statement made it difficult for her to understand at first. Realising what he had said, she spoke to the room, just as he had done.

“How is this unethical and sitting between my legs with a vibrating wand is not?”

He stiffened.

“It is because I barely held on to my professionalism with you. It is because I wanted to wait mere days after your treatment was complete and then send you an owl asking you to accompany me to supper.”

Hermione lay very still, not even breathing.

“And now I have frightened you.”

Hermione’s heart pounded in her chest.

“Maybe a bit.”

He started pulling back his arm but she caught his wrist, her fingernails digging into the skin. “I should leave.”

“No, don’t leave. I have been left too much.”

Reluctance in his movement, he lay back down and relaxed. When she was sure that he would not jump up and leave her alone in the darkness with its shadows, she released his wrist.

They lay awake and silent for a long time.

Hermione’s thoughts became fuzzy and disjointed as she wondered whether she could ever lead a normal life, whether she could ever bear to be married with all its implications and consequences.

Her eyes drifted over the stripy shadows of the window’s glazing bars against the silk-covered wall. Her eyes blinked now slowly. Pattern on pattern. Drifting shut.

The duvet was gone, the body behind her warm and firm. A gentle hand grasped her top leg underneath the knee and pulled it back over the hip behind her. Warm, open-mouthed kisses on her shoulder.

And then breaching her; mechanical movement neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just there.

A hand slid over her hip toward her centre.

This time, she did not jerk awake. Her eyes flew open and she took a deep breath, heart racing. She drew a shaky hand over her face.

Gods, she was damaged.

Feeling the steady breath of the man behind her, she lay awake through the light gray hours of dawn.

***

“Why do you not read anymore?”

“Read?”

When Malfoy had insisted that she join him in a curiously generic and bland office, she had expected all manners of horrible things to happen. But this?

“Yes. I know that Helia showed you the library, I was sure to find you there from dawn ‘til dusk.”

Her eyes flickered unsteadily, searching for an object to concentrate on but finding none in the near-empty room.

“It doesn’t seem important anymore.”

Malfoy looked at her for a moment and obviously decided to let it go, making a note in her file before him.

“How about your work?”

“Suspended indefinitely due to pending insanity, remember? First it scared me but now it feels like thinking about something I did a long time ago. Distant.”

“Have you thought about the future in general? I mean long term? Maybe you could work freelance?”

Hermione’s lips twitched and tightened. Thinking about the future was a detached and highly theoretical exercise.

“Malfoy, there were about fifteen apprentice Healers in de Belleme’s group. Not to mention junior consultants, senior consultants, nurses, the cleaning witch... Even if the people who might be willing to hire me as a researcher have somehow missed the scandal in The Daily Prophet, how long do you think it would take until somebody would ask me how my stay was at the madhouse? Some... some of them have sketches maybe even animated illustrations of my treatment, which means they have a nice little home-made porn film featuring my ... my ... my pussy!”

She turned around to the window in a sharp movement. The leafless trees looked austere and wise in the light fog.

“I can picture it quite perfectly. The client sitting across from me, leaning back, and then: ‘So, Miss Granger, do you still shave?’ or ‘My nephew has some very nice illustrations from his Healer’s curriculum that he shared with us last New Year’s Eve.’ No, Malfoy, I am finished in Britain.”

“In fact, I am finished full stop. I have been thinking about France.” Malfoy made an odd sort of noise that sounded as if he was choking at that. “But I have to be honest with myself. Talking to people, reading the occasional novel or watching a film in French is not the same as working in research in a francophone country.” She sighed. “It would take me years and years to get my language skills to the required level.”

Her hands wandered restlessly. Why was there nothing to occupy her with?

“Besides, my plans were never very enthusiastic to start with. It all seems very... petty.”

“Petty?”

“Yes. Looking back I can hardly believe how caught up I was in my work, how convinced I was that I, and only I, could do a thorough job. I don’t want that anymore.”

“What do you want?”

“Less. More. A job that I like and pays the bills but does not demand more than I am able or willing to give. Somebody to come home to.” A tiny hand on my breast...

Malfoy shifted in an uncomfortable way and leafed through her file until he had found what he was looking for.

“I would like you to tell me about your treatment in the ward.”

Hermione withdrew instantly, closing off whatever emotion she could shut away safely. She squashed the instinct to draw her knees up to her chest and wrap her arms around them. She would not appear weak.

“You have already read all about it, why do I have to say it?”

Hermione looked out of the tall window. Was there a way to flee from this?

“Granger, I think reading ‘pelvic massage administered’ in a file is quite different from actually experiencing it. Especially as I see it entered three times the same day. In close succession.” Malfoy smoothed the stack of parchment with his hands. “How did they even manage that?”

Hermione sat very still. Maybe it would pass.

It did not.

“I begged them to stop.”

She traced the edge of the wooden desk before her, regretting not having a tablecloth to pick apart at the edges.

“I tried to fight them, then.” Malfoy did not say anything, did not move to make notes in the margins of the parchments. “It just got worse and worse from there. The more I fought, the more severe and unusual the treatment became. And with that, there were more and more people interested. The crowd was growing and they were all gawping and staring at my... sex. It was like I had ceased to exist and all that was left of me was between my legs.”

“Have they ever penetrated you?”

She flinched violently.

“No!...Yes. You did! The keeper did once. With his fingers. At night. Why?”

Malfoy’s face flushed pink and he looked away, moving a small calendar of the kind that Gringotts owled to all their clients each Christmas for the fraction of an inch. Hermione remembered that the very same calendar sat on top of a small shelf near her front door.

“Yes. Internal massage was common practice until the eighteenth century. Now it’s rather controversial.”

Hermione faintly remembered him telling her of new methods.

“If you want to press charges, you need to prove that they actually did something they are not supposed to do. From what I read, de Belleme was going from one sort of treatment to the next without even waiting for it to take effect and the number of sessions exceeded the usual by far. However he did not stray from the accepted and widely practiced methods, so it will be hard to accuse him of anything, really.”

Hermione needed to take a deep breath and gritted her teeth, making her jaws hurt with the force.

“He can torture me and because he wears a Healer’s robe he gets away with it? It’s that easy?”

Malfoy pressed his lips into a thin line.

“We could ask the nurse that alerted me after the cruciology session whether she would be willing to testify.”

“How did she know to alert you anyhow? Because you had been my Healer before?”

He shook his head.

“No. Your belongings had been registered and locked away when you were admitted. They found my private floo address in your purse and she assumed that we knew each other beyond the Healer-patient relationship.”

Hermione stared at the desk, not wanting to look at Malfoy, when something else registered in her mind.

“Testify,” she said slowly. “What exactly would it mean for me to press charges?”

He sighed.

“You would have to testify before the Wizengamot. In detail, I am afraid. They would also hear experts...”

“Wizarding experts, no doubt,” she cut over him in a scathing voice.

“Yes. Who else should they hear?”

“Who else, indeed.” Her hands balled into fists. “You realise that, in the Muggle world, Hysteria has not been treated in this manner for nearly a century? And you know why? They have finally recognised a female orgasm when they saw one and it dawned on them that a doctor bringing off his patients might be somewhat inappropriate.”

Her voice had risen with every word she hurled toward him.

Malfoy just looked confused, which infuriated her to no end.

“I know that hysterical paroxysm is essentially an orgasm. It is effective nonetheless.”

Hermione felt very calm all of a sudden.

“Effective.”

“You do not deny that there were issues you had to deal with?” He asked very gently.

“Issues! I was slightly depressed, probably burnt out, in need of a friend, and that led to me being intimidated into what you call effective!”

“And what does it change if you call it by another name?”

The gentleness in his voice was unbearable.

“The treatment, for instance!” She exploded, jumping from her chair and leaning over the desk panting.

After a little while, during which Malfoy just sat and looked up at her with his damn gentle patience, she straightened.

“I am done. I don’t want to see you right now.”

The door closed behind her with a satisfying bang.


	10. Meditatio

“I’m sorry.”

Hermione did not acknowledge Malfoy’s apology.

“I am so sorry that I didn’t find you earlier.”

Latching on to something inside her that she could pour her anger in to and cover up the other swirling, confusing feelings that threatened to break free, she turned around.

He was his usual perfect self, Healer robes pristine white.

“Yes, how come you were never invited to watch the spectacle? I thought they might have been selling tickets by the third day or so!”

He looked away.

“I only have cottage affiliation with St. Mungo’s. I am going in twice or thrice a week for appointments to do them a favour. They have trouble keeping enough experts on staff as they cannot pay as well as a private hospital. In return I always have reserved beds for my patients there, in case I need more extensive facilities than I can provide here. I think de Belleme was very careful not to let anything reach me too quickly. I actually asked him about you in passing one day and he just said that everything was progressing ‘by the plan’. If I would have known which plan he was talking about...”

He trailed off and Hermione turned back to the beautiful view of the gardens slowly melding into the decidedly English countryside.

A middle-aged witch strode along the pebbled walk toward the imposing wrought iron gate protecting Malfoy Manor. Protecting her robes from the falling moisture, she raised the hem a bit to show her black, buttoned ankle boots.

Hermione wiped away the condensation of her breath on the cold window panes.

The witch had stopped and pulled out her wand. With a swift gesture from her neckline to her hips she suddenly stood straighter, looked firmer. Stowing her wand with a satisfied smile, she continued toward the gate and finally vanished after crossing the wards.

The witch had just fastened her corset.

“You are seeing patients again?” Hermione now leaned against the window sill, afraid that without its support she would visibly tremble.

“Under very strict security measures. They can only go as far as the treatment room.” His eyes pleaded understanding. “I could not just stop receiving patients. They depend on me.”

“Yes. How very practical.” Her voice was bitter on her tongue. “And profitable. After all, our affliction is chronic. Not curable but treatable. Week after week, month after month, year after year. Tell me, Malfoy, how much do your private patients pay for your services?”

He sighed.

“Granger, this is a specialised, private clinic. No, treatment does not come cheap. But I’ll have you know that I do not exclusively treat Hysteria.”

“Really? What else? Nymphomania? Pathological masturbation?” At his silence she leaned the back of her head against the cool glass and closed her eyes, a maniacal laugh bubbling past her lips. “Oh gods.”

“My patients trust me. I can’t just send them on to some other Healer.”

Like you did with me? She thought scathingly, knowing full well that she had repeatedly insisted on being transferred.

“I bet it helps that you are young and good-looking.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth she tensed, digging her fingernails into the wooden sill behind her. There was no way she could chalk up her words to anything other than jealousy.

He remained silent for a long time and she thought that he might turn and leave the room wordlessly, when he spoke.

“Fuck this.”

What?

He took off his white robes, bunched them up and threw them on the floor.

Hermione watched with wide eyes the abandonment of decorum.

“Malfoy?” Her voice trembled.

“I am taking myself off your case as immediate Healer.”

Her eyes grew even larger, thoughts racing. She had angered him! He was sending her away! Was he sending her... back? Fear settled on her shoulders like a cloak of ice.

“I will stay Healer in charge but your direct therapy will be delegated to another specialist I am planning to bring into the clinic.”

She didn’t know whether the fear or the relief was stronger.

“What-what other specialist?”

“A Mind Healer I know from university. She will be much more able to help you deal with the aftermath of... what happened.”

“O-Okay.” Insane after all.

She found her arms wrapped tightly around herself, erecting the only wall she had to protect against the hostile world around her.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him edging closer, tentative movements as if approaching a wild horse. Very slowly, giving her time to object at any time, he slid his hands up her arms and drew her close. She could feel his hands on her back, resting there light as birds. His nose in her hair, he inhaled deeply.

“Is this allowed?” he whispered.

Allowed? Allowed?? It’s daytime and you are not wearing Healer’s robes and your thumb is caressing my shoulder blade and this just might make all of this real.

Allowed.

Surely not.

The rigid thing her upper body had become loosened suddenly and fit against Malfoy like a shard of a broken vase that, after trying and turning, had found its perfect place. Seamless.

Who would have thought that my shoulder blade is sensitive at all?

***

“Would you like to come down for dinner? Potter has announced his arrival.”

Malfoy’s voice sounded muffled through the heavy wooden door of her room.

Relieved that the conversation that was hanging over their heads was once more postponed, she called out, asking him to give her a minute.

She stepped backward in front of the full length mirror, glad that she had scrubbed herself under the hot stream of the shower until her skin had glowed pink. The dreaded witch in the park had been elegant in old-fashioned Victorian robes. Hermione had tried very hard to find her old and frumpy but she hadn’t been. The witch had held her head high, curls piled carefully on top of her head. Small pearls had dangled from her earlobes and while her robes would not be found in Witch Weekly’s fashion review, they were clearly of high quality. That witch was refined. She was well off and could probably make small talk about any topic under the sun.

Had Malfoy put his hands on her?

Had he used the crocus oil?

The pain she had felt in her chest earlier that day flared.

Or had it been a disposable wand for her?

Somehow, the thought of the plain piece of wood made the stab of jealousy less sharp.

Her reflection in the leaded window was distorted and incomplete. Each small pane of glass showed a different piece of her, some the same, making her appear to have three eyes and several mouths. But even in the fractioned and warped image of her, she could see that she had not taken her time combing her hair this morning. The white t-shirt she was wearing was the same she had slept in and the comfortable grey track suit was out of shape.

Still, it was her Malfoy had pulled into his arms, not the wealthy witch in her taffeta robes.

Would it be alright to call him Draco now?

With a surge of determination she had gone to her room, pulled off the track suit and stuffed it into the laundry basket for the house-elves to take care of.

Her shower had taken much longer than anticipated because she felt the sudden need to exfoliate with a soft brush. Now for the first time since she had come to Malfoy Manor, she dressed in actual clothes. Clothes she could wear walking down Diagon Alley should she choose so.

The little cherubs on the golden frame of the mirror smiled and waved at her approvingly as she stood in front of it in soft, dark blue, long-sleeved robes. They were nothing fancy, just comfortable winter robes without so much as a neckline.

Still, pulling back her hair with her favourite clips that she had found among the things Harry had brought her, Hermione felt as if she was getting ready for a rendezvous.

Feeling giddy and restless, she met Malfoy – no, Draco, Draco, she practiced silently – outside her door. He offered her his arm like in an old-fashioned film and led her not to the meeting room where they had breakfast with Harry just a few days ago, but to a long narrow room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the landscaped gardens in the back of the manor. The black and white tile floor shone warmly where the fire painted it in reddish tones.

Harry was stood in front of the fireplace, flanked on either side by a long row of citrus trees planted along the wall. He unsuccessfully tried to brush soot off his jeans.

“Hermione!” His eyes lit up.

It felt good to snuggle into his arms, like coming home after a long walk in winter weather.

He kissed her hair and tucked her head under his chin.

“You’kay?” he whispered and she shrugged into his hold.

“Can I get you anything? Flowers? Chocolates? An ever-sharpening peacock quill?”

She could feel his steady heartbeat under her ear. Strong and familiar.

“How about a global Obliviate?” she tried to joke.

The steady drum sped up.

“Have you seen the Prophet then?

Tensing, she shook her head no and drew back to look at him.

“Should I have?”

Harry looked worried.

“Probably not. I’ll tell you a little over dinner and you can read the articles afterward.”

Articles.

“Oh dear. Plural.”

“You might not want to read the interview with Ron.” She felt the blood drain from her face in a dizzying rush and pulled back a little.

“Ron?”

Harry ruffled his hair, which immediately afterward settled back into sticking up in all directions.

“He assures me that all quotes have been vastly taken out of context. People have been harassing him left, right and centre, either congratulating him that he was wizard enough to keep your insanity at bay while you two were together or ridiculing him that he didn’t manage to marry you and ‘get you under control for good’. After they tried to pitch him and Trebetarry against each other, he even had to take a week off from work because he was being hounded.”

Hermione struggled to disentangle herself from his arms while he tried to hold on.

“Well, sorry to be inconvenient! At least he still has a job to go back to and the last time I checked, nobody was about to subject him to public hand jobs!”

“He’s very sorry. You know he’s not a bad guy,” Harry said sadly.

She deflated.

“I know. The break-up was bad, not him.”

“Nor you.”

He found her gaze and held it in comfortable silence.

Malfoy cleared his throat.

“The house-elves have spelled the soup warm for the third time now.” While his voice was polite as always, it held an edge of... something.

Harry did not let her go but simply pulled her over to the round table, set for three in a way that they all could enjoy the view of the darkening landscape. When the silvery cloche spell surrounding the first course dissipated, tiny lights blinked into existence along footpaths and in the sculpted boxwood trees.

Delighted at the pretty sight at first, a sense of dread settled over her after a moment.

“Please tell me they are not real fairies!” she begged.

Malfoy stopped his spoon halfway to his mouth and let it settle back on his plate.

“Of course these are real fairies. Where else would they spend the winter, if not in boxwood hedges?” He took a spoonful of creamy mushroom soup. “It’s really just Christmas trees they need to be magically tied to; they hate the smell.”

Seeing Hermione´s wide-eyed and sickened look, Harry tried to change the subject.

“I brought the Prophet”

“And do you plan to shackle fairies to your Christmas tree?” she asked hotly, ignoring Harry completely. All of a sudden she wanted to lash out. “Is this some sort of pure-blood fetish? Tying people up?”

Draco cocked his head to the side.

“It is as much a pure-blood fetish as it is a Muggle or mixed blood fetish. And no, I do not plan to have the tree decorated with fairies. We traditionally used enchanted candles. My mother could not bear the fairies’ wailing and was outraged when my father offered to silence them.”

Embarrassed, Hermione turned back to her cooling soup and drew circular patterns with her spoon until the dollop of crème fraiche sat in lumpy blots in the congealed liquid.

Harry cleared his throat in the uneasy silence.

“As I said, I brought the Prophet. I think you should have a look at the articles.”

He produced a folded copy of the dreaded newspaper from an inside pocket of his robes. Hermione pushed her plate away from her and started to skim the articles Harry had marked with a bright yellow Muggle marker pen.

The soup all but ignored by all three of them, the deep plates vanished without being replaced by the next course. The house-elves must have sensed that nobody was in the mood for eating.

Hermione furrowed her brow in confusion.

“Why did you mark this article? It has nothing... Oh! An initiative for automatic Ministry guardianship for all Muggle-borns until their twenty-first birthday or until they marry?” She looked up. “Can they do that?”

“Maybe. Possibly.” Harry took her hand and squeezed. “I’ll throw all the political weight I have against that, I promise.”

Hermione squeezed back and smiled.

“Thank you Harry. I am just speechless. Is this happening because of me? Is this my fault?”

Harry opened his mouth but before he could speak, Draco had already cut in.

“No!” he said with conviction. “Never! Never think that you are responsible for the behaviour of a group of reprehensible sticks-in-the-mud. They were just waiting for any sort of justification for their plans. It is a bit too much of a coincidence that they had the proposals for these laws all drawn up in practically no time. This is usually a lengthy and complicated process. I think they are trying to speed things up by inducing a panic in the population.”

Hermione rested her elbows on the table and put her head in her hands. Tipping her head sideways, she tried to read a related commentary that was printed down to up.

“Um... Hermione, we have to organise some things. Your landlord has contacted me. He has enacted his right to terminate your lease without due notice,” Harry sighed deeply. “Public disgrace.”

She looked at him. For a moment her mind was blank, utterly unable to make sense of his words.

“Public disgrace.” Would it never stop? Would it just go on and on day after day? “Wait! What about my things? My furniture? My books?”

Harry reached over and covered her hand with his.

“Shrunk and stored in my attic.”

She did not stir. Her fingers on the pristine white damask table cloth turned cold, the warmth seeping out of her hand with every heart beat that never quite reached all the way to her fingertips anymore.

“Hermione?”

“They’re forcing me into the Muggle world. They are exiling me.” Biting the nail of her thumb, she stared at the illuminated gardens beyond the tall windows. “If I am not part of the community anymore, I am not eligible to go before the Wizengamot, am I?”

“You might not be eligible; they could argue that you no longer fall under their jurisdiction.”

The burst of energy that she had felt earlier together with her determination to do something productive drained out of her. Suddenly she was not sure whether she would be able to deal with what lay ahead.

She turned to Malfoy, her voice eerily calm. “They are exiling me and there is nothing I can do about it, is there?”

He didn’t try to smile reassuringly or appease her with empty platitudes promising that everything would be alright, and she was thankful for it.

“You can stay here as long as you want or need. Nobody can exile you from Malfoy Manor but me and I am not going to do that.” He carefully folded the pages of The Daily Prophet that were strewn across the table. “This estate is still part of the wizarding world. And Potter is not the only one who can throw his weight around.”

It took her a while to catch his meaning, answering his raised eyebrow with a genuine smile of her own.

“I think I would like to have my wand back now.”

She was ready to fight.

***

“Potter.” Malfoy’s tone was icy.

Harry’s shoulders shook in quiet amusement.

“Don’t worry, Draco. You were there when she refused my marriage proposal. And a good thing it was, too. In a Granger Potter Weasley love triangle somebody would have been left out in the long term.”

“I am quite sure I have no idea what you are trying to allude to.”

“Sure you don’t. When I was hugging Hermione I could only feel how much you wanted to be in my place all the way from the other side of the room.” Harry filled his hand with sparkling Floo powder from a silver box on the mantle. “Just be careful; do not toy with her. I am not above hurting you if you hurt her.” His lips curled in a grim little smile. “I’d much rather team up with you and hurt de Belleme.”

Malfoy blinked. “I see no problem there.”

“As long as we’re on the same page.”

Harry threw the floo powder into the flames. “Grimmauld Place.”

He looked over his shoulder at Malfoy and stepped out of the Manor.

Draco took his time returning to the conservatory; turning the evening’s events over and over in his mind, examining every word from every angle. Maybe there was hope after all.

When he entered the dark room, he found her with her hand resting against the cold glass of the iron-rimmed panes. Hermione stared into the night, the fairies slowly winking out into slumber one by one.

“First, do no harm,” he whispered.


	11. Speculatio

“You might have to fight fire with fire.” Draco opened the door to his study, revealing tall towers of books grouped around a surprisingly full and used-looking desk. “If you want to challenge his book and the treatment you received at his hand before the Wizengamot, you need to be prepared.”

Shiny paperbacks sat atop expensive hardcovers clad in chalky pastel linen. A bright orange magazine stuck out of one leaning tower of books.

“You have been researching Muggle methods?”

“Augustus Pye, a former Healer at St. Mungo’s, has been helping me navigate Blackwell’s.”

“Former?”

“He was a bit too... enthusiastic about Muggle techniques. The hospital and he decided to agree to disagree and part ways.”

“Is he trustworthy?”

He shrugged.

“As far as the saying ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ applies.”

Hermione gaped.

“An unbreakable vow can do wonders,” he smirked.

She let her fingers trail over the spines of the stacked books. Several were simply titled “Hysteria,” although publishers and authors varied. Hermione cocked her head to better be able to read the titles:

Psychopathology.

Studies on.

Madness and.

Invention of.

Hysteria, Hysteria, Hysteria.

Covers in blue and green and even bright pink. Then a leather-bound and gilded spine: On The Pathology And Treatment Of Hysteria (1853). Hermione bristled slightly. How could that be in any way favourable to her case? Her fingers brushed sleek plastic, and the almost alien feel of it, here, in such a pure-blood setting, compelled her to extricate the curious object.

A DVD?

She couldn’t help but laugh.

“Stephen Fry? Really? How does that relate?”

Malfoy scratched the back of his neck.

“I don’t know. There is a shiny plate-like thing inside. It wouldn’t transform itself into any kind of written documentation. I assume we need a password?”

Hermione could hardly suppress the smile that was threatening to take over her face.

“Um, no. It’s a film, or in this case, a show rather than a film. Like a recorded play for a Pensieve? You need a Muggle device to view it.” She thought about the last time she had sat down at her cousin’s house to watch back-to-back episodes of Qi and felt a fierce longing to do something so carefree and non-magical. “I somehow doubt that it is relevant to the research. It could be very entertaining, though.”

A bit of good humour would be a wonderful thing to indulge in. Right after getting her hands on the strikingly purple ‘Contemporary Approaches to the Science of Hysteria’ and the more lacklustre grey ‘Stress: The Brain-Body Connection’.

***

Hermione collapsed into an exhausted heap on the brown Chesterfield sofa in Draco’s study.

“Is therapy supposed to be so draining? I always feel like I ran a marathon afterward.”

“A marathon? You mean to Marathon? That’s quite far from here,” Draco noted absently while filling a long parchment with notes from a slim volume that he held open with his left hand.

Hermione waved the comment off. “Muggle name of a very long race. Never mind.” She threw her arm over her eyes. “The Mind Healer said that we could simply remove the painful memories. It would be like it never happened.”

After a long, awkward silence, she lifted her arm and turned to look at Draco, perched stiffly on the edge of his desk.

“Is...” He cleared his throat. “Is she pushing you for that?” he asked, his voice straining to be light.

“No. I asked about the possibilities of Legilimency and memory removal for therapeutic purposes. I had been wondering why you never tried...” She trailed off, fidgeting with the hem of her robe sleeves.

“I would never dare to. Removing memories in the state you were in... it would have been like taking a battle axe to your mind where a precise scalpel was needed. And regarding Legilimency... I had already read what the bastard had done to you; I thought there was no need to rape your mind on top of all that.”

Hermione sighed and nodded. “She did say it might be an option for later, but I shouldn’t have anything like that done until after our hearing before the Wizengamot. It might make me seem too detached and indifferent.” She shuddered. “I am not sure I will ever consider it. Being indifferent toward what happened is a frightening thought, nearly as frightening as acquiring the memories in the first place.”

“It could leave your personality permanently altered. It is problematic to remove such a large amount of memories, especially such traumatic ones.”

Hermione thought of her parents in Australia and had to wince. Battle axe, indeed.

“Other than plans for personality-removal, how are those sessions going from your perspective? I read the Healer’s general reports, but that doesn’t say anything about your perspective.”

“Honestly? I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s emotionally painful and draining. Frustrating sometimes. But I think talking about what happened somehow numbs me to it a little bit.”

“Frustrating? Frustrating how?”

She gestured in a desperate way. “Why does that therapist never answer a question? Well, almost never. It’s so easy: I ask a question, she answers; but no. All I get is ‘What do you think it means?’ If I knew, I wouldn’t bloody ask!”

“I think it’s supposed to be draining on some level. Shows that it’s actually working.”

Hermione propped herself up on her elbows and cast a hopeful look at him.

“Do you really think so?”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “Do you think it’s working?”

She grabbed the first thing that her hand could reach and threw it in his general direction. Her supine position on the sofa made her movement awkward, and the small blue paperback landed a few feet from Draco in front of his desk.

Sitting up, Hermione frowned.

“What’s this?”

“Nothing!” His answer came a bit too fast and his ears were a bit too pink for her to let this go. They scrambled from opposite sides of the room, tripping over furniture, each trying to get to the little book first.

Hermione was closer and snatched the book from under his seeker’s hand that closed around thin air.

“Diagnosing the Debutante? Really?” she snorted and the pink of his ears deepened. “Medical Romance. Who would have ever thought?” Her eyes sparkled in amusement and he forgot his embarrassment.

“It came up in a list when Augustus searched the spider web.”

For a moment Hermione stared at him blankly before deciphering his meaning.

“You mean the internet? You found a trashy romance novel while researching for academic purposes and actually read it?”

Pink ears became magenta.

This was too good to be true!

“Give it here!” He lunged.

She danced around a low table and out of his reach. Quickly, she let the pages flip past her thumb until there was a break in the even rhythm.

“And it opens most easily at...” She quickly looked at the page in question and read two sentences. “The sex scene!” she crowed, and he charged.

With a delighted squeak she rounded the coffee table and tried to seek cover behind his desk. Draco leapt over it and tackled her to fall onto the sofa.

Nose to nose, they stared at each other with wide eyes.

“I nearly bought a small collection of these books when you started treating me.”

“You did?”

“I had a terrible crush on you.”

“You had?” he asked carefully.

“Uh huh.”

“And now?”

She swallowed. “I don’t think it could be called a crush anymore.”

“Oh.” Draco closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against hers. “I am afraid to break you.” The tip of his nose touched hers. “I am completely at sea. I feel like I will say or do something unforgivable and then you will never want to see me again.”

Hermione was very still and listened to his steady breathing. Threading her fingers through his hair, she pushed his head away from her and tilted his face up.

“I think we both might have been underestimating my utter recklessness.”

Before he could draw away from her in confusion, she pulled him down and pressed her lips to his mouth.

***

“They are looking down on it!” He stabbed an accusing finger in the direction of a particularly heavy medicinal text.

“Huh?” Hermione looked up from her own notes.

“The Muggle Healers of today. They are calling hysteria a fashion, yet they quote Hippocrates and Galen. How can something be a fashion if it has been around for two thousand years or longer?” Clasping his hands behind his back, he paced the length of the room.

“They amuse themselves with the cases they find, find it entertaining how the Muggle Healers helped those women!”

He narrowed his eyes and stabbed the air with his index finger. “I think they get off on it. ‘Haha! A Healer invented a vibrating device that later became a sex toy, hahaha!’

“We have been using the Vibratum charm for centuries, and although I cannot guarantee that nobody ever used it for more, ah, personal reasons, I cannot find anything funny in its medical application!” Suddenly he slowed his steps and slumped his shoulders. “For those Muggle women, it was not a fashion, at least not consciously; it was very real.

“Reading about some of the more recent, ‘genuine’ conditions, they strike me as quite ludicrous and seem just as fashionable, yet those conditions are taken seriously. It’s unnerving me to no end!” He breathed deeply and collected a stack of parchment from underneath the side table next to the armchair.

“Some case studies of Muggle hysteria give more background information than others. Society ladies – arranged marriages, widows, those Muggle priestesses that vowed celibacy, restricted social interaction, boredom, all that rings true for most of my patients. Very interesting. I do not like how hysteria is not acknowledged at least as a historical fact, not a mere manifestation of sexual frustration. It is true that treating hysteria is a very lucrative field, but to be truly successful, the Healer needs a lot of knowledge and skill, not like the clumsy beasts they let at you at St. Mungo’s.”

“But don’t you see that this is a socially constructed disease?” Hermione cried out to stop his rambling.

“Of course it is! But so is... let me look this up...” He leafed through his parchment of notes. “Burnout! What kind of name for a medical condition is that, anyhow? And... Psychosocial Stress Disorder. Cutting it up neatly into a fractured version of the same thing does not make it go away!”

“But at least nobody is getting hurt anymore in the Muggle world because of that!”

Draco looked at Hermione very seriously. “Don’t they?”

She faltered a bit. “Yes! I mean... What do you mean?”

“Have you read the material carefully? The Muggle doctors seem rather helpless against it all. Relapses are bountiful. More and more people are unable to live a normal life, might even get drugged to the gills to be able to function. There was also... Bloody hell, where did I put that? Ah! There!” He waved a bright leaflet. “Crystal therapy? Are they trying to resort to witchcraft?”

“We are researching to prove that de Belleme was wrong, not that he was right!”

Draco threw his hands in the air. “Yes! But that does not change the facts!”

“The fact is that they torture women in his ward!”

He slowed down and gently clasped her shoulders.

“Yes,” he said softly. “And that’s why we have to find a way to prove that there is a better way than how it’s always been done. I don’t want to see you married off to Trebetarry, to learn toaccepthim and bear a child per year for the rest of your fertile life.”

Hermione pushed her own stack of parchment toward him.

“The medication in the Muggle books is very interesting; I know of potions with similar ingredients. With a bit of research we might be able to replicate the effects. What do you think?”

He stared at her diagrams and notes. “Possibly. But it will take months, maybe years of research and experiments. We’d need a team of specialist brewers, premises and funding...” Draco rubbed his nose absently. “But I fear for my patients. Most of them are very, very lonely with no prospect of changing that. Giving them a potion instead of a weekly appointment could plunge them into even more loneliness and they might become dependent on the potions.”

“And they are not dependent on you?” The remark came out more aggressive than planned.

He nodded. “They might be, but the appointment gives them something to plan their week around, something to make sure they keep their robes in order and their hair coiffed. We talk a bit before the treatment; I am afraid that many might wither away without all that.”

Just as Hermione thought whether to shout at him or stomp out of the room, a Ministry owl started pecking insistently at the window. Draco let the bird inside and untied the scroll from its leg. With a flourish of important professionalism, the owl ignored the offered treat and swooped from the window sill.

Draco read in silence, staring much longer at the parchment than its length warranted.

“The Wizengamot has approved a hearing de Belleme has requested.”

Hermione felt very cold. Paralysed, she couldn’t even ask what that meant. Draco looked up with a determined set of his jaw.

“How quickly can you write? Or rather, how quickly can you formulate thoughts on research into publishable material?”

“I have been working in research for years; I’d say I have a certain amount of routine.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Why?”

“I think you should write your own book.”

***

What was he doing?

Draco was late.

He was never late.

Was he with a... a patient? What was he doing? What was he treating? Whom was he treating? Was she attractive?

Hermione pushed her research away from her. Restless, she walked the length of the room, stared out of the window and walked back to Draco’s desk. Under a stack of half-unrolled scrolls, a corner of a reddish brown, slim book peeked out.

Hermione didn’t remember seeing it before and pulled it out.

On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity, Epilepsy, Catalepsy and Hysteria in Females by Isaac Baker Brown.

Baker Brown, Baker Brown.

Something rang a bell but she could not place the name.

Opening the book at a random page, she started to read.

‘...I never operate or sanction an operation on any patient under ten years of age.’

Operate?

Ten years of age?

With dawning horror, she skimmed to the next page.

‘...the clitoris is freely excised either by scissors or knife – I always prefer the scissors.’*

Scissors.

The maroon book fell from her shaking hands. No air was entering her lungs. Desperate for relief, she vainly gasped for breath. Her efforts were futile and she blindly grasped for the paper bin to painfully retch over.

“Oh, shit!”

Hands took the wild strands of her hair hanging down the sides of her head and drew them back.

When she had nothing more to expel, Draco gently helped her to her feet and guided her to the Chesterfield sofa she loved to lounge on while reading.

Having her securely settled, he quickly Scourgified the bin and picked up the book from the elaborate green Persian silk carpet.

“You were not supposed to find this.” He opened a drawer in his desk and placed the small tome inside it.

“Why do you have that?” she sobbed, feeling small and frightened.

“Because I can’t risk not knowing it. I can’t risk them knowing about it and me being unable to refute their claims.”

Hermione keened and closed her eyes.

Draco started stroking her hair and did not stop until her shoulders relaxed and her breathing became even. She must have appeared to be sleeping because his stroking hand jumped a bit when she spoke, eyes still closed.

“I think this is what they call a trigger. Damn.”

Hermione turned her head into his hand.

“Are you certain that you want to do this? We could find somebody else to help with research. Or we could postpone everything for an indefinite amount of time,” he said quietly.

Hermione sat up, suddenly very focused.

“And let somebody else in on all the gory details? Or letting the bastard go on? No. Absolutely no.”

He looked at her, searching her face, her eyes.

“Alright then.”

Hermione drew her wand from her sleeve, casting a categorising spell. Parchments and books lifted into the air and assembled in small clouds of knowledge on paper before settling in neat stacks on the floor, sofa, desk and any flat surface available. One little pile even perched atop the chessboard in the corner of the room, much to the annoyance of the pieces, now confined to the edges of the board.

De Belleme had no idea whom he had acquired as an enemy.

***

“Ha! Even the Muggles say we are right!”

“What?” Had he sounded triumphant??

“Here.” Draco handed her a thin, A4-sized binder. Somebody’s thesis or dissertation, Hermione assumed. He tapped a place somewhere near the middle of the opened page. “See? There are too many stress hormones, which represses the production of sexual hormones, resulting in an imbalance.”

Hermione read the indicated paragraph, then flipped to the page before and again back to the one Malfoy had shown to her. She looked up and glowered at him.

“It says exercise or sex. And the sex comment is more of a tongue-in-cheek afterthought.”

“And which do you think the Wizengamot, or anybody for that matter, will latch onto when they read this?”

Hermione threw the binder onto the littered desk and sat heavily on the worn leather armchair.

Why? Why??

The bitter taste of bile flooded her mouth.

“What now? Give up? You and de Belleme and history and bloody Galen were obviously right, and I should be grateful that there were so many people willing to spread my stress-hormone-ridden thighs?”

He sobered.

“No. There are alternatives, as we can see. I should have been aware of them.”

If he had told her to go run in the park three times a week instead of... instead of... just instead, things would have been different. Very different.

“It doesn’t change a thing. If we found this, anybody can. I will not be able to stop the book. Or stop de Belleme from torturing women. He will keep on teaching and his students will go out into the world and continue a two thousand year tradition. Name any famous name in wizarding medical history and you can be sure that they had something to say on hysteria! They have Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, Paracelsus, Paré, Kneipp! And who do I have? Nathaniel Highmore. A squib. That will go over well with the Wizengamot!”

She scrubbed her hands over her face. “Gods, I am so tired.”

He was next to her in a flash.

“Tired? Look at me.” He tilted her head back by her chin. “Have you been resting enough?” He frowned. “I really should be more attentive. I tend to get carried away by research just as much as you; that’s not a good thing for you right now.” He held up a hand when she tried to protest. “Wait here for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

***

“Come with me. I have a treat for you that I was saving for a rainy day, so to speak.”

He took her hand and pulled her along the corridor at a quick pace. His hand was strong and warm in hers and made her hope that wherever they were going, it would take a while to get there.

He pulled her into the library. A bit mournfully, she had to let his hand go as he strode to a cupboard on the far side of the room. Opening the carved doors, he hefted a heavy, grey object from its depths.

“A Pensieve?”

Draco set the wide stone bowl on top of a reading table. “I tried to make the Muggle Pensieve plate work but the machinery will simply not function in a heavily magical environment such as this.” He beamed at her. “So I found a way around it.”

Holding out his hand for her to take it, he stood at the Pensieve inviting her. Curious, she let him hold her when they bent over the swirling surface.

“Malfoy! This has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with our research!”

They had landed in the drawing room of a Muggle house. A brown-haired man in a lab coat, three stethoscopes slung around his neck, another peeking out of his pocket, was stood scowling at a memory-Draco.

“It is part of a greater context, so shush, Augustus.”

“This is decidedly odd!” the man who Hermione realised must be Healer Pye exclaimed, but moved to an uncomfortable looking chair situated directly behind a plush two-seater sofa.

He sat down, huffing heavily, and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Tell me that this is not some perverse joke, Malfoy. At least let me sit on the sofa!” He aimed the remote control at the television, which now showed the menu of a DVD that he navigated with a bit of difficulty.

“No can do. The sofa is reserved.” Memory-Draco looked around, finding nothing amiss. “Right, I’ll be off then, don’t want to spoil it for myself. Just owl me the memory tomorrow, will you?”

Pye kept scowling at the screen, making a shooing gesture, and memory-Draco Disapparated.

Real life Draco bowed invitingly in front of the green sofa. “Milady...”

Healer Pye shifted in his seat, grumbling something that sounded like ‘perverse’.

“You made your friend watch the DVD just to get the memory?” Hermione tried to sound accusing but failed because she could not help but beam at Draco.

Draco nodded. “I wish we could Disillusion him but this is the best I can do. At least he will be behind us and we won’t see him all the time. I hope he is not a commenter; I so hate people who constantly comment while I am trying to watch a play.”

Hermione let herself fall into the soft cushions and leaned against Draco, drawing her legs up. Stephen Fry appeared on the screen and she bounced a bit in anticipation.

Half an hour later saw her crying tears of mirth, burying her face in Draco’s shoulder, while he shook with laughter.

“This is wonderful! Gods, I love you!”

Realising what she had just said, she went very still as Draco’s attention was no longer on the screen. Afraid that she had crossed a line, she waited. He was so quiet!

The memory of Healer Pye was draped over the back of the sofa, gasping for breath, his laugh a strange, shrieking sound.

Draco enfolded her in a tight embrace. “It’s alright, Hermione, I know what you meant.” He rested his head on top of hers, again comfortably watching the memory of a 1980s Stephen Fry.

She couldn’t help but feel like a bird in the sky, sensing a storm coming on.

I wish I knew.

* Direct quote from pages 16 and 17, On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity, Epilepsy, Catalepsy and Hysteria in Females by Isaac Baker Brown, 1866


	12. Denuntio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for all the lovely reviews! I apologise for my lack of response. RL is kicking my butt at the best of times and as an EU national in Scotland, Brexit has thrown a potential spanner into all sorts of future plans that now need sorting out and reconsidering, which might mean revising a lot of long term aspirations and maybe even moving back home. Or elsewhere.

Taking a deep breath, Hermione pressed down on the door handle and pushed. The heavy door swung open easily, revealing the damp English winter weather, fog clinging to the small groups of trees and creeping along hillsides.

Relieved to be free to leave and overwhelmed by the prospect of being able to go through with her half-cooked plan, Hermione squared her shoulders, stepped outside and closed the door behind her. Immediately she fell into a slow trot, as if afraid she might change her mind. Pebbles crunched under her trainers as she made her way down the curved driveway.

Merlin, she hated running so much.

She found she had to force her feet to stay in the regular rhythm that she had started with but already felt short of breath. She rounded another corner in the manor’s park and doubled over in a coughing fit.

Must go on. Can’t give up now.

Starting her slow trot again, she could taste the metal of blood on her tongue, filling her mouth.

The little neatly-trimmed hedges and gravel paths passed as if in slow motion. Surely a trot could not be slower than her usual walking pace?

Under her arms, a vaguely uncomfortable warm wetness crept outward. She hated, hated, hated sweat. Especially in cold surroundings.

It made her feel ill.

Cold damp on the outside of her clothes, warm damp on the inside.

Although out in the open, claustrophobia closed in on her. She wanted to tear off her sweaty clothes and scrub herself clean under a hot shower. In a super-human effort, she tried to outrun the feeling, desperation fueling her.

After a few dozen meters, her psychological strength petered out and the taste of blood flooded her mouth with new intensity.

The tall oak tree in the distance tilted at an alarming angle and she let herself fall onto one of the marble benches on the path.

Her legs were shaking, the muscles tight and unresponsive. She braced her hands on her knees, as much to steady herself as to evade having to look at her hands shaking, too.

She let out a slow, shuddery breath.

Failure.

Such a failure, as always.

Primary school had been hell. Everyone around her had expected her to live up to her parents’ achievements. Nobody would have said it in that way of course, but the assumption was always there. Early on she had noticed that the question ‘What would you like to be when you grow up’ was different for her. For her, it was always ‘Where would you like to study.’

Her grandfather had been proud to rise from a working class background to a degree in dentistry and then to his own dentistry practice. His son had followed his footsteps and even the first Christmas present she could remember was a toy dentistry set from her grandfather Granger.

Her parents had both studied at Oxford and were hoping the same for her. She had been hoping to achieve this, too, until all hopes of escaping the awkwardness of less studious, less socially awkward, less awkward children in general, had been squashed by a wax-sealed letter.

No matter how studious, she would have never been able to compensate enough for the lack of Muggle schooling to get into any prestigious university, let alone Oxford.

Failure.

In her short and rare fits of teenage rebellion during summer months away from Hogwarts, she had found it amusing to shock people by saying she would apply to St. Andrews, or if the asker was a former classmate of her parents: Cambridge. Oh, the horror.

Hogwarts had been the light at the end of the tunnel, only to reveal more children who were different from her, children who had grown up around magic and whose parents understood and nurtured their children’s abilities. She had been forced to take pills that were supposed to keep her in check after having set her dolls on fire repeatedly.

Failure.

She stood to make her way back to the manor house. Feeling dispirited, the pauses between her slow trots became longer and longer until she simply walked back to the imposing main doors. Hermione felt like dragging her feet through the gravel, soiling her trainers with dust and leaving scars on the surface of the perfectly groomed paths.

Returning to the warm vestibule, Hermione shivered in discomfort. Her skin felt cold under the damp clothing and the warm air seemed to constrict her breathing.

She needed to get away, to get to her room, out of these disgusting clothes and under the shower and then... then nothing. She still had nowhere to go. Realisation struck her like lightning.

Malfoy would not put up with her forever. The hearing would end this situation one way or another and then she really would have to decide what to do with her life.

Suddenly angry beyond comprehension she started clawing at her damp T-shirt, not even attempting to pull it over her head. Only the sound of rending it would do.

When the fabric was too soft and stretchy under her ripping fingers, she let out a frustrated sound of fury. With a sweeping movement she attacked the first thing she could reach.

Rage loud in her head, Hermione stared down at the shards of a large gaudily decorated porcelain vase, rage loud in her head. Some of the sharp pieces were as long as her hand and would fit easily into her palm. They would slash into the gleaming wall panelling and leave wide, jagged wounds in the wood. Maybe the edges would slice into her flesh and drip red over the perfectly designed interior of the vestibule. Didn´t marble absorb blood never to release it again?

Hermione panted over the small area of destruction she had caused, the urge to build on it and mar the place permanently, strong.

“What happened? Are you all right?”

Yes!

An angry scream in her head and possibly on her lips, she spun around and struck. The root of her hand connected with his chin, making his head snap back.

Her fists rained onto his shoulders, putting her full strength and weight behind her blows.

“You bastard!”

She opened her hand and he made a surprised and pained sound as she grabbed a fistful of his hair. Hermione let go and slashed her contorted fingers through the air.

Draco caught her hand before she could claw into his eyes and skin. He quickly got hold of the other one and held both her wrists in one hand, pulling her close, trapping her struggling arms between their bodies.

Hermione screamed into his face and tried to kick his shins but he somehow both avoided her and restrained her even more tightly. Unable to move, Hermione suddenly felt tired.

She let her head fall against his chest and wailed.

“Why? Why did you have to treat me for hysteria? Why did you hand me over to a sadist? Why did you not check up on me?”

She sobbed violently. Her throat hurt.

“Why did I not just go to my Muggle GP?”

She heard herself make an embarrassing sound between sob and agonised scream.

The material under her cheek felt wet and cold to the touch. She closed her eyes and just leaned into him, drawing hiccoughing breaths.

With the twisting feel of side-along Apparition, she found herself in the room she had unofficially all but moved into.

Still in her sweaty clothes, Draco urged her to lie down. She no longer felt like everything was suffocating her but now everything felt cold. Draco drew the thick duvet over her shivering shoulders.

Her lids closed like lead over her eyes. She wanted to sleep and never wake up.

“Hermione?”

A hand slid under her head and helped her lift it slightly. Opening her eyes took effort. Draco was holding a phial containing a milky substance in his hand, a bloody gash standing out against the white skin of his pale cheek. She must have got closer than she had realised.

“Sorry,” she slurred.

“Don´t worry about it.” He held the phial to her lips. “A mild calming draught.”

She swallowed thankfully and slid back onto her pillow.

“I underestimated.”

Hermione did not open her eyes but concentrated on his soft voice and his hand stroking her damp hair.

“I underestimated the impact your background would have on your treatment. I underestimated my own attraction to you. I underestimated de Belleme and his ruthlessness. I just about miscalculated every single aspect of the situation. I am a lousy Healer.”

His voice grew ever fainter as he told her time and again that they would make it through this, whatever it would take.

***

“I think I might have a solution to your exercise dilemma.”

The sand-coloured walls were decorated in bold colours; reds, blues and greens, only a little faded with age. Bath scenes seemed to wrap around the walls of the chamber.

Men in long robes or loin cloths sat on marble seats, discussing amongst themselves or being massaged on padded tables.

Women, haphazardly dressed in loose dresses and togas were standing near tables brimming with fresh fruit and wine, lounging on low couches or sitting on benches being coiffed by house elves.

The flickering candlelight made it seem as if the images were in constant motion, following Hermione as she slowly surveyed the room.

Had that woman just put down her hand mirror?

"Where are we?”

"We are in the oldest part of the manor." Draco lit a few more candles with his wand, making the figures on the wall dance.

"Aquilus Malefidus built it when he first came to Britain under Frontinus. His great grandson put it under Fidelius when he realised that Roman rule would end sooner rather than later and only re-emerged when another branch of the family came back as Malfoi in 1066." He picked up a folded piece of fabric from a curved folding chair. "We always had a knack for choosing the right side of politics to be on. My father is the famous exception from the rule." He held up the fabric with both hands and let it unfold, revealing a modest, blue one-piece bathing suit. "Potter assures me this is appropriate. If he is pulling my leg, I can have the elves bring something that covers your arms and legs."

Startled, Hermione burst out laughing.

"I... Appropriate for what exactly?" Her eyes grew round. "You have a bloody Roman bath house under the manor, haven't you?"

"It lacks somewhat the more modern amenities that the upstairs baths possess but it makes up for it in size. If you'd rather not..."

"If I'd rather not? Are you joking?" She snatched the bathing suit out of his hands. "Where can I change and can I take pictures? Is it as beautiful as the ante room?"

Draco pointed at a doorway, a red linen curtain concealing what lay behind.

Hermione drew back the cloth to peek inside a comfortable dressing area, decorated in blocks and frames of rich colours that matched the frescos in the ante room. Stone benches waited to receive her clothes.

She turned to Draco, an excited smile on her face.

"I'll be just a minute."

The painted woman with the hand mirror covered her mouth in delighted amusement.

***

Clutching a towel to her chest, Hermione stood in awe at the side of the large pool. Mosaics covered the inside of the pool and the length and breadth of the walls up to the high, vaulted ceiling.

"I thought we'd forego the whole tepidarium and calidarium affair and skip straight to swimming. I had the water heated."

Draco was fussing with his towel, clearly unsure where to look. The man who had sat between her open thighs and brought her to climax with his hands and wand was reduced to skittish embarrassment by a Muggle bathing suit.

He himself was wearing an old fashioned number that resembled something between a vest and a onesie, covering his legs down to his knees.

Leaving their towels on the low sofas, they slowly made their way down the wide steps into the water.

Floating.

Feeling the water's resistance against her muscles when she pushed her body through it, covering length after length.

After the first few minutes, Draco had realised that she was not inclined to leisurely swim and chat but that she wanted to feel the exertion of the exercise.

He stayed at the side of the pool, watching her with a slight smile while drinking from a goblet that had appeared at his elbow on the tiled floor.

Hermione lost herself in the repetitive movements, her mind quiet and clear. She felt grounded and safe; strong, as if she could go on swimming forever.

Twenty minutes later, Hermione flipped over on her back, floating and slowing her breathing.

"I thought you might like this better than running in the park."

She brought her feet under her body and stood, her eyes sparkling with life.

"You have no idea how good I feel! This is a marvellous place, Draco! May I come back? Soon?"

He smiled, warming his features and eyes.

"You can come back here whenever and as often as you like, Hermione."

She smiled back at him and thought that she would really like to kiss the drops of wine from his lips.

Slowly and a bit awkwardly she walked through the water to the side of the pool.

She plucked a grape from the plate that a helpful elf had placed there and played with the fruit to gain a bit of time before popping it into her mouth.

“Draco,...”

The crack of a house elf appearing and almost instantly disappearing stopped her from completing her sentence or gathering the courage to taste the wine on his lips.

A scroll of parchment lay on a shiny brass plate, the mark of the Ministry of Magic prominent on the heavy wax seal.

A cold feeling of dread settled on Hermione's chest.

Draco reached for the missive and broke the seal.

His face was devoid of emotion while reading through it.

Rolling the vellum up carefully, he placed it back on the plate and breathed deeply.

“We are summoned to the Wizengamot. Tomorrow. Your auxiliary night care wizard is staking a claim, stating that he filed his petition minutes before you transferred into my care and that he therefore should be given preference.”


	13. Delectatio et Dolor

The bustle of bodies in the Ministry entrance hall felt overwhelming after spending weeks first strapped to a bed and then secluded in the manor.

In front of the courtroom door, Draco took her cold, shaking hands in his.

“It will be alright. Let the barrister do his job. I won't be able to sit with you, but I'll be right behind...”

“You won't be sitting with me?” she blurted.

“No, you have been summoned as a witness, while I am actually being accused of removing you from reach of your, er… future husband.”

“What!”

“Oh, and here,” Draco mumbled distractedly, digging through his pockets. “Ah. Here we are.” He took her left hand gently into his and slipped a slim white gold band with a sparkling sapphire onto it. “Wearing the Malfoy betrothal ring, you are now effectively my fiancée. Don’t worry, we will only use this as a last resort, and I haven’t activated the spell that prevents you from removing it, so you can actually un-betroth yourself at any time.”

Draco grinned at her as he was ushered through a side door by a bailiff.

Hermione stood next to her barrister, a huge wizard by the name of Grey, gaping at her hand. Once again, something momentous had happened and it had required neither her prior knowledge nor her consent.

She was starting to get angry.

Very, very angry.

 

***

 

“The magical time stamp on these documents precedes the one on Mr Trebetarry’s documents by a few minutes. The question is, was Miss Granger in a mental state fit to leave the ward at her own risk. Also, why did you not follow procedure and at least consulted the Head of Department before removing her from St. Mungo’s?”

“Madam Chairwoman,” Draco began, “at the time, I had returned from a conference only to find that Miss Granger’s initial referral papers had never been fully processed. Puzzled why this might have been the case, I tried to contact her, only to be informed that she had been sectioned in an emergency procedure.”

Draco took a drink of water from the goblet at his elbow and cleared his throat.

“When I found her, I was shocked to find Miss Granger in a deteriorated state, bound to her hospital bed. When I had referred her to Healer de Belleme, she had been responding well to her outpatient treatment, although it did make her very uncomfortable, being Muggle-born and unfamiliar with certain aspects of Wizarding medicine.”

“I understand that Miss Granger’s blood status made her case very rare?”

“Yes, Madam Chairwoman. The only case of Muggle-born Witches’ Hysteria I have ever come across in my career.”

“How much of your desire to take over Miss Granger’s case again have to do with career advancement, I wonder?”

 

Hermione’s head whipped around in the direction of the overly sweet voice. Clad in pink tweed, Dolores Umbridge sat among the Wizengamot, wide-eyed and smiling.

“Healer de Belleme is a reputable expert in this field,” continued Umbridge. “We hear that he is due to publish a new book soon. Does this irk you, Healer Malfoy? Did you regret referring Miss Granger instead of keeping this source of valuable research material to yourself?”

“Dolores,” Draco smiled. “How delightful to see you here. While it is true that I would have liked to include her as a case study in my ongoing research, I decided to refer her to Healer de Belleme because of our personal history. As you know, we were in the same form at Hogwarts and although we were never close, we had crossed each other’s path before.”

He smiled a brilliant smile at her and turned back to the chairwoman. “What I found when I consulted Miss Granger’s files troubled me deeply. She had been subjected to sedation and a rigorous treatment plan that her case never warranted. A number of cures had been administered within the time frame of two weeks, which would usually have taken several months to proceed through. I can only speculate that this was done in order to be able to include her reactions as a Muggle-born to all and any currently available treatments of Witches’ Hysteria.” Draco sought out eye contact with the witches of the Wizengamot. “Her treatment included douches with cold-water jets, sensory deprivation and cruciology. The next scheduled treatment would have been the surgical removal of her womb, subject to her future husband’s approval.”

He let the enormity of the situation sink in.

“I had referred a young woman with a moderate medical condition, well on the way of finishing her course of treatment. I returned to a frightened, tortured patient, due to be forced into a lifelong bond with her auxiliary night care wizard. I found it prudent to remove her from the situation and investigate further.”

“Healer de Belleme, what do you have to say to this?” asked the chairwoman.

The broad wizard stood slowly, drawing attention to his traditional robes and gleaming medals. “I had taken on Miss Granger’s referral expecting a routine case,” he said, “but found a witch on the brink of self-destruction. It was only for her protection that I admitted her to the ward and immediately commenced rigorous treatment to pull her back from the brink.”

“Healer de Belleme,” Dolores Umbridge twittered from her seat far above them. “What would be your recommendations, in your capacity as an expert in this field?”

“Marriage. Clearly, being Muggle-born, she had not the support of a wizarding parent to guide her in seeking out a mate in a timely manner. I hear in the Muggle world, the average age at the time of marriage is rising, and it is not unusual at all for Muggles to remain unmarried well into their mid-life expectancy.”

“And would you blame wizarding society’s lack of guidance in this matter?”

“Most certainly, Dolores. Compulsory wizarding studies at Hogwarts for Muggle-borns, as well as possibly an assigned godparent of sorts from the old families, would have prevented all of this, I believe.”

Dolores Umbridge pursed her lips pensively. She twirled a lock of her hair and looked around the chamber with wide, innocent eyes.

“I wonder,” she said, “would laws for Muggle-born protection be a way to prevent those hapless creatures from injuring themselves? Such as, maybe, marriage laws to encourage bonding within, let’s say, a year or two after leaving Hogwarts?”

De Belleme smiled with all his teeth. “What a wonderful suggestion, Dolores. You always think of the most vulnerable among us first.”

A low murmur broke out among the seated wizards and witches.

“Thank you, Dolores, you may be seated.” Chairwoman Berrycloth cleared her throat and the conversations around the room trailed off. “How do you explain the delay in filing your paperwork, Healer de Belleme?”

He straightened and puffed up his chest. “Only time constraints and putting priority on my patient’s wellbeing led to the unfortunate circumstances of delayed paperwork.”

 

The chairwoman shuffled some of the parchments on her desk. “You have written a book, Healer de Belleme? I believe it is due to be launched in the bookshops tomorrow, am I right?”

“Indeed Madam Chairwoman, the general public have a right to know about the abyss our Muggle-born witches are unknowingly walking the edge of, in danger of falling in at any time.”

Again the level of noise swelled as spectators whispered excitedly. Chairwoman Berrycloth flicked her wand and had her gavel pound the desk.

“You were most concerned for your young patient,” she continued, as de Belleme nodded sagely, “yet, you found time to write up an elaborate treatment plan, dated the day after Miss Granger was admitted. This treatment plan shows all of the treatments she received, including the planned hysterectomy. I see here you marked this with a little arrow and ‘find idiot husband’.”

“These are not the copies I submitted!” de Belleme bellowed. He tried to move out of his seat row but he was blocked by spectators.

“No, Healer, these are the yellowprint copies that I have authority to summon. They show all of your corrections.”

Sweat started appearing in small droplets on his forehead and upper lip. With stiff fingers he fumbled for a handkerchief to mop his shiny face. “I-I can explain!”

The chairwoman ignored him. “Not only did you find time to write the treatment plan, no, you also wrote an entire book, contacted publishers and negotiated contracts. You advertised Miss Granger’s case among St. Mungo’s Healer apprentices, ensuring a growing interest in her case. Word spread, so I hear, to medical institutions across wizarding Europe and beyond.”

“It was important to draw attention to this ground-breaking research…”

“Yet, you could not find time to file referral papers?”

De Belleme opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it and snapped it shut with a resounding click of teeth.

“Healer Malfoy, what is your treatment plan for Miss Granger?”

Draco blinked out of an intense stare at the other Healer. “Madam Chairwoman, as it happens, Miss Granger and I have been conducting intense research ourselves.”

A startled, high-pitched shriek of laughter out of the audience was quickly muffled. Draco waited for silence to return. “My treatment plan for her at the moment consists of rest, exercise and what the Muggles call talking therapy, a concept in which, to put it very simply, the patient verbalises experiences and feelings in order to better understand and process certain events. Her condition has rapidly improved since she left St. Mungo’s, and while my treatment plan is rather loose and unwritten as of now, we have indeed brought our findings to paper – a combined account of patient and Healer. Malfoy Publishing was gracious enough to publish on short notice, and our account of what occurred, as well as the compiled research of both the wizarding and the Muggle world, is available at Flourish and Blotts as well as Tomes and Scrolls as of…” He smiled and twirled his fingers, casting a wandless Tempus spell. “Right now.”

De Belleme leaped out of his seat. “How dare you!”

“How dare I? You nearly killed a patient in your lust for publicity and gold!”

“You are a disgrace to Pureblood medicine!”

“You are a disgrace for thinking there is different medicine for Purebloods!”

“Mudbloods are not the same! They need to be kept on a short leash because they grow up outside of our culture!”

“A leash to strangle them with?”

“Simul delectatio et dolor*,” Umbridge shrieked into the fray, spittle flying from her lips. “Protect our values!”

A wave of powerful magic crashed over the room, plunging pandemonium into shocked, stark silence.

“Out.”

Nobody dared move.

“Out!” Chairwoman Berrycloth roared. “All of you! Case dismissed. And do not think I will let this mockery of a hearing go uninvestigated. I will not be used as a public relations stunt!”

The bailiffs began herding reluctant spectators out of the doors furthest from the chairwoman’s gavel.

“De Belleme, Malfoy, you are both banned from the Ministry building for two weeks,” continued the chairwoman. “I have noticed and invalidated your requests for press conferences after the hearing. Go find a place more fitting to your spectacles before I start ordering arrests!”

Every single person in the room was on their feet. Hermione tried to stand against the flow of bodies trying to reach the doors, but she was washed along with the tide. She turned in search of platinum-blond hair, and made eye contact with Draco across the room. It only lasted a second, then she was jostled hard and had to fight to stay on her feet.

In the hall outside the courtroom, she worked her way to the side but couldn’t find leverage to be able to stop walking with the crowd.

A hand gripped her arm hard and pulled her behind a tapestry into a disused stump of a corridor. Her arms were caught and a heavy body threw her into the stone wall behind her.

“You little bitch. Did you think I would let you get away with this? I will not let you run from me.” De Belleme pressed into her and let her feel his bulk against her breasts and hips. “Trebetarry would have been easy to manipulate. He would have given me free access to you for regular treatment.”

Her skirts hitched up high, he thrust a knee between her thighs. Hermione felt frozen in fear, frozen in shock.

Conditioned to hold still.

“Don’t try to tell me that you didn’t enjoy my hands and my wand on you. You were gagging for it, you little whore. Coming and coming again, no matter who was watching. Did you like that? Your legs forced open and exposed in front of everyone?” His knee ground upwards into her crotch. “I heard that Muggles are much more libertine in their attitudes.” He licked her frantic pulse along her throat.

Pushing her left fist into his gut, she screamed. It took him a few seconds to overcome his surprise at her resistance, then his lips formed a weirdly small ‘o’ in his meaty face. The breath seemed to rush out of him. Clutching his abdomen, he staggered back.

Ripping down the tapestry, a wizard stood in the archway, wand extended towards a de Belleme, who clumsily tried to get to his wand, hands moving as if under water.

Trebetarry shot a bright orange spell at him, moments before Draco and Harry tore around the corner.

“Are you alright?” shouted Harry.

Draco was tugging and patting at her frantically, silently, his hands shaking while feeling for injuries.

“I am now,” replied Hermione. “He didn’t get very far.”

Draco’s head fell to her shoulder and he let out a long breath that could have been a sob.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “I should have foreseen this. I am so sorry.” He had found her hand and held tightly to it. The Malfoy betrothal ring felt hot against her skin and dug into her fingers, but she welcomed the sting.

“I think,” Harry said slowly, looking from de Belleme to Hermione to Trebetarry, who stood to the side. “I think the Healer here--” he poked him with the tip of his shoe-- “has been resisting arrest after assaulting an innocent witch in front of witnesses.”

Trebetarry of all people was the first one to catch on. “Indeed. It was quite the struggle you had on your hands there, Auror Potter.”

Harry nodded sagely. “In the interest of everybody’s safety, I will be forced to make use of my Auror emergency Apparating privileges.”

Draco spoke into Hermione’s neck, breath warm against her skin. “What are you waiting for, Potter?”

With a pop, Harry released the Stunning spell from de Belleme. Before the sluggish wizard could react, they vanished from the corridor.

Trebetarry inched backwards, wringing his hands, uncertain of his welcome.

“Thank you,” Hermione said firmly. Trebetarry nodded and fled.

Draco was still holding on to her, fingers threaded through hers, thumb on her ring.

“Draco?” He nodded and lifted his face, eyes a little red. “Please take me home.”

 

***

 

Owls had started arriving mere minutes after their return to Malfoy Manor. None of them were sent by close friends and family, obvious by their lack of security clearance. An ever-growing flock of scroll-bearing birds sat patiently in the trees around the building. The birds had first sat staring at her through the French doors of the drawing room, when she had fled their uncomfortable presence. They had to have moved with her, finding a convenient tree just outside her bedroom.

Not ready to ask the birds inside, she searched for a distraction.

Her boxes were stacked along the wall in a corner of her room. Most of them were marked 'books.' Two had 'kitchen' written on them in Harry's messy script. One 'miscellaneous,' whatever that was supposed to mean. The boxes looked heavy, unshrunk by the house-elves but not unpacked because, really, there were no book shelves in her ... in the bedroom she occupied in the manor. Neither was there a kitchen, and obviously not enough storage space to put miscellaneous objects.

Indecisive, Hermione stared at her belongings from a safe? distance. Should she re-shrink the boxes?

She still hadn't asked for her wand.

What was wrong with her?

A frown creasing her forehead, she crossed the room and hefted a 'books' box from one box tower to the next so she could open ‘miscellaneous.’ A watercolour set, a magnifying glass, a long-abandoned knitting project, dried flowers from her cousin's wedding ... She closed the box and moved it to the side.

'Deco' proclaimed the writing on the next box. Decoration? Her cottage had been furnished, which included curtains and even pictures on the walls. She had never been home enough to change much; had Harry packed her landlord's landscape oil on canvas paintings?

Objects of varying shapes and sizes wrapped in bubble magic were tightly fitted into the box. Hermione lifted one out and unrolled the magical wrapping only to see it vanish as soon as it had been fully removed from the little figurine it was protecting.

'First Day at Hogwarts', of the Hedgewitch Children Collection, sparkled at her. She had received the first one from Ron after they had finished school. She had smiled and hugged him and put the garish thing on the mantle of the fireplace in the drawing room of the shared flat she had moved into during her apprenticeship. Then Molly had latched onto Hermione's apparent new-found passion for collecting and had made sure to gift her appropriate little statues at every opportunity.

'Lovebirds' and 'Secret Hope' had been the last additions to the crowded shelves of her cottage, right before her relationship with Ron had ended so badly. A little witch and wizard pair was chasing after one another around a tree, carving their initials into the porcelain bark – H & R, of course - then stood hand in hand, admiring their work before starting over again. The other was even worse. The little witch would take a bridal veil out of a trunk and try it on in front of a mirror, startle as if she heard somebody coming and quickly hid the headpiece inside the trunk before taking it out again and turning left and right, smiling at her reflection.

Hermione didn't want the kitschy things in her bedroom. She set 'First Day at Hogwarts' on top of a box and looked around for a substitute for the bubble magic wrap. The excited little witch ran to the Sorting Hat as she had done countless times before and overbalanced the trinket, falling off the edge of the box and landing hard on the polished wooden floor. The little figurine broke into three pieces and stopped moving.

Hermione let out an annoyed huff. She really had to ask Draco for her wand sooner rather than later. She couldn't even cast a simple Reparo.

Bending down to gather up the broken pieces, she suddenly stopped mid-motion. Nibbling on her lip, she reached inside the box and took out another wrapped figurine. 'Little Housewitch' was a witch with rosy cheeks, sporting a checkered apron and carrying a steaming Sunday roast. There had been somewhat of a pattern in the figurines Molly had selected. Somewhere in the pile of wrapped shapes, there should be a flour-covered witch baking happily and a witch learning to knit with magic, tangling herself in multi-coloured wool.

The Sunday roast didn't only break, it shattered.

Quickly, the lovebirds and secretly hoping witch followed. The baker, the knitter, the gardener, the witch doing needlepoint and the one resting her cheek on her wizard’s shoulder joined the growing pile of shards.

The empty decoration box very efficiently vanished.

“Feeling destructive?” Draco leaned against the door-jamb of her room.

“No,” she replied, surprised by her own answer. Looking at the symbolic remains of a relationship that clearly had been doomed from the start, she felt oddly peaceful.

“No, I actually feel like putting things back together.” Smoothing down her robes, she straightened and took a deep breath. “I think we should let the owls in and I’ve been meaning to ask about my wand…”

 

***

 

“Look at that!” she cried, waving a handful of unrolled scrolls in his face. “They want me to come research with them!” She flung her arms around his neck.

Draco exhaled slowly. “Who is they?” he asked tentatively, patting at her arms awkwardly.

Cheeks flushed, she leafed through the parchments. “The wizarding section of La Salpetière in Paris, the Grey Cloister Institute in Berlin and the Stregheria in Rome!”

Draco seemed to still under her embrace. “These are excellent academic institutions. An honour to be invited. A great honour.”

Not hearing the leaden quality of his words, Hermione clutched the parchments to her chest and twirled. “Oh, what should I do? What should I do? So many possibilities!”

Not paying Draco’s less than enthusiastic reaction any mind, she danced out of the door and ran to her room, already weighing pros and cons of the inviting institutions and drafting possible letters for a reply by express owl.

Late in the evening she found the manor deserted. Uncertain what to do, she stood in front of the large unlit fireplace in his study, where they had spent so many hours researching and writing. She drew a shaky breath and swallowed hard. Taking a clean sheaf of parchment from a stack, she accepted a quill from the white queen of the chess set on Draco’s desk.

 

Dear Draco,

I am very sorry that I did not get to say good-bye properly.

I need to at least look at what they are offering.

Thank you for everything.

Yours,

Hermione

 

After a moment’s deliberation, she slipped the Malfoy betrothal ring from her finger and placed it on her note.

 

* Simul delectatio et dolor – Simultaneous pain and pleasure, cure against hysteria as recommended by Giovanni Matteo Ferrari da Grado (1436 – 1472), royal physician


	14. Mutatio et Licentia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: A huge thank you to Stgulik and Mrequecky for the excellent beta!
> 
> Also, thank you so much for all the reviews and likes! I read every single one of them and they really make my day!

“The voluntary test subjects have so far responded quite positively to the exercise and group work. Only one patient has requested traditional treatment.”

 

Hermione's quill flew over her parchment, flitting between several charts. Her hand ached and she had to pause to massage the heel of her thumb and flex her fingers a few times. Taking a deep breath, she let her eyes sweep over the wizards seated with her at the long conference table. Most of them were comfortably leaning back in their padded high-backed armchairs, studying the reports that had been passed around at the start of the meeting.

 

Resting her writing hand on the polished wood of the table, she could feel slight tremors that she was unable to suppress. She quickly hid both hands in her lap. Healer Melegatti followed her movement with his eyes and raised a blond eyebrow. She smiled what she hoped a beaming smile and made to follow the presentation of the German wizard sent from the Grey Cloister. She needed a cup of tea, and soon.

 

Twenty minutes later, standing in the tiny nook that served as home for tea making facilities and snack storage, she breathed deeply while listening to the low humming of the water-heating charm. She still didn't trust her hands to pour the boiling water or add milk and sugar.

 

What was wrong with her?

 

“Did you see what's wrong with her?”

 

Hermione's heart stuttered to a startled halt before pounding even faster.

 

“Quite obvious, wasn't it? No wonder after leaving her treatment so abruptly.”

 

There was a pause in conversation as Healer Melegatti and Healer Mistificatore sipped the espressi or cappuccini supplied by the university's elves. Unfortunately, those elves always refused to put milk in tea, leaving Hermione to her own devices when seeking out a cuppa.

 

“I wonder what Malfoy was doing to her. He was always the adventurous kind. Do you remember his article on piercings? Can you imagine what it would do to put a huge big pointer on the one thing that a lot of wizards seem unable to locate even if they'd use a Point-Me spell? It would put us out of business, that's what it would do.”

 

“Some of the foundation stage healers in training got some very entertaining material from their friends at St Mungo's. Goodness, they had really done a number on her. You think Malfoy... went further than just pelvic massage to snap her out of it?”

 

“One of the famous piercings, maybe? I can imagine him doing all sorts of unapproved, naughty things to her. Hell, I can imagine myself doing all sorts of unapproved, naughty things to her.”

 

The Healers laughed and moved away from the tiny kitchenette. Hermione leaned against the wall and stared unseeingly at her cup. Water-heating charm forgotten, a cold, heavy cloak of fear had settled on her, making it impossible to move.

 

***

 

The door to her hotel room slammed shut behind her and she immediately cast not just one, but all the locking charms she knew upon the door.

 

Looking around the comfortable room she started checking it systematically for hidden entryways, monitoring charms and traps. She could not stop herself from returning to the door time and again, pushing down the door handle, wishing uselessly for a Muggle door with locks and keys. Turning around, she crossed the room to open the window, only to see her hands shake violently when she reached for the wooden shutters to bar her sanctuary against the weak orangey-pink sunset over the wizarding quarter of Rome.

 

Singular flurries of tiny snow crystals drifted through the waning light. It was not cold enough and there were not enough of them for the snow to settle, but still they reminded Hermione that she had worked right through Christmas, hiding from friends and family, buried in scrolls of parchment, not wanting to answer questions however politely they might be formulated.

 

Suddenly, homesickness slammed into her and took her breath away. Draco, watching silly DVDs in the Pensieve, the baths, writing together… Draco. She had run away again.

 

Hermione's hands fell to her side and she stood, her brow creased, staring at the hundreds and hundreds of interconnecting roofs laid with rounded terracotta tiles. Candles shimmered in the dusk, illuminating the windows of many wizarding households.

 

“Oh, to hell with you. To hell with all of you.”

 

She pushed the half-closed green shutters back to reveal the full view and secured them in place with the small metal brackets.

 

Lugging her tiny, round wrought-iron table over to the window, Hermione sat down, sharpened quill in hand.

 

Time to make a list or three.

 

***

 

"It has come to my attention that I somehow managed to work for nearly two months without a formal contract and ignored the Christmas holidays in favour of pushing the project forward."

 

The wizards sat up in their armchairs, clearly uncomfortable at her new attitude. Hermione cleared her throat, trying to bring her heart rate down to something in a normal range. She did not avoid looking in Healer Melegatti's direction. She did not.

 

“However I think the project is now going strong, with a solid base of systems and procedures in place that will carry through to the conclusion or expenditure of the initial research.”

 

Hermione levitated a scroll of parchment towards the head of research at La Stregheria’s mediwizardry department. Signore Maliardus received the scroll with a grave expression.

 

“I have taken the liberty to outline a few things that I would like to have added to a standard freelancing contract. For instance, I intend to work from my residence in Britain from next week. Floo conferences and a bi-weekly Portkey to the department meetings should do nicely, I think.” Some of her colleagues drew in breaths to voice comments, but she ignored them. “I also want the freedom to take breaks and sabbaticals in order to commit to other projects elsewhere.”

 

“Now, now!” Signore Maliardus was not happy. “You have chosen employment with our institution and should remain loyal. We cannot risk our findings leaving these walls and others being credited for them!”

 

“But I haven’t been employed at all, have I? Aside from that, the standard secrecy spells should suffice as they do for all freelance researchers.”

 

The greying wizard spluttered as he unrolled the parchment to examine the outlined contract within.

 

“Protection of privacy? Penalties for breach of confidentiality? What is the meaning of this?”

 

“I expect spells and wards to be put in place at all research facilities where I work that prevent unauthorised material about me personally to be discussed, shown or distributed in any way. It has come to my attention that this institution has been rather permissive in this regard.”

 

“Well, I never!”

 

Hermione turned to the two resident Healers on staff of the project and regarded Melegatti and Mistificatore evenly.

 

“The Grey Cloister would be very happy to renew their offer of a cooperation for both short- and long-term projects,” Meister Karabat said in a quiet voice. “I am sure they would also be happy to discuss certain benefits, such as exclusive use of the Haus Löwenberg research facilities on Peacock Island.”

 

“The former residence of the Royal Alchemist? I thought that was a myth!” Hermione’s eyes sparkled with opportunity.

 

Karabat smiled. “The very same. If need be, it can be placed under a very specific Fidelius and be used for both academic and residential purposes. You would not be bothered by outsiders if you did not wish it.”

 

“I think I would like to discuss that in detail. Maybe we can meet in Berlin in a few weeks’ time?”

 

Signore Maliardus stood abruptly. “Miss Granger. Please. Let us convene to my office, and I will be happy to discuss your proposals with both you and our solicitor.”

 

***

 

The wards yielded gently when Hermione pushed against the heavy gates of Malfoy Manor. She had half-expected to be thrown backwards, never to be admitted again.

 

The park was still and dormant in the snowless English winter night. The sound of her footsteps on the gravel was loud in her ears, and she expected for the household to wake and make her leave, making it clear that allowing her entrance to the grounds was an oversight to be corrected instantly.

 

Yet the tall double doors unlocked themselves at her touch. She felt oddly guilty to step inside, like a trespasser in the dark building. Through the open door to the drawing room, she could see the low glow of a tall Christmas tree. With a sharp pang of regret, she wondered whether Draco had spent Christmas alone, like herself.

 

With a quiet pop, a sleepy house elf appeared in the entry hall. Rubbing his eyes like a small child, he looked up at Hermione with his ears drooping around his face.

 

“Will Miss be needing anything?”

 

She couldn’t help but laugh. “No. No, I think I will find everything I need. Thank you.”

 

The little creature appeared satisfied by this and started to turn away. With a moment of hesitation, he said, “The house elves are being very happy that Miss came home,” and disappeared back to the elf nests.

 

Home.

 

House elves knew who belonged in a household because their magic was sensitive to the way a master felt about his family. Could she dare hope that her tentative plans might not be as far-fetched and unlikely to turn into reality as she feared?

 

The panelled bedroom door swung open soundlessly and revealed a spacious room with tall windows overlooking the grounds to the back of Malfoy Manor. Moonlight spilled over a small bureau and a crowded bookshelf at its side. Tall stacks of books huddled around the desk chair. Blond hair peeked out from under the thick duvet on the large four-poster bed.

 

Hermione stood awkwardly. None of her multiple plans applied. She had not anticipated to be able to simply walk into the manor, pass by wards and house elves and find Draco’s room devoid of any alarm against intruders. She had strategies for any situation, bar a peacefully sleeping Draco in his quiet bedroom. Should she wake him or slink out of the door to her own room, delaying the inevitable confrontation? Before she knew it, she had already taken two small steps backwards. Yes, maybe it would be better to do this well-rested, over breakfast, if things went well. Another backward step and she bumped into a little table that immediately gave way. A dozen tomes or more clattered to the floor, some shrieking indignantly. Hermione spun around, trying to catch the tumbling books, shushing the enraged, flapping pages.

 

“Lumos!”

 

Oh no.

 

“Hermione?”

 

How had he got this close this quickly? “I am so sorry!” she blurted.

 

“It’s alright, I disabled all the wards for you.”

 

“No, really, I am so sorry for just leaving and for not writing or floo-calling or…”

 

He kissed her.

 

Draco kissed her.

 

This was another scenario she had no contingency plan for.

 

She felt herself being walked back towards the bed and narrowly missed hitting her head on one of the bedposts. Her arm grazed painfully along the elaborate carvings.

 

“Ow!” she said into his mouth.

 

Draco lifted his head and stared intently at her face.

 

“That’s new.” He stepped back and regarded her with narrowed eyes. “You are fully dressed.”

 

She blinked. “Yes?”

 

“Are you really here?” What? He poked her in the shoulder. Hard.

 

“Ouch! I think so? I mean, why would you think I weren’t?”

 

He frowned, eyebrows drawing together. “Did I take the wrong potion before bed? This is not how this dream usually goes.”

 

Hermione swallowed with difficulty. “How… how does it usually go?”

 

“You come back to seduce me, we fall into bed together, you stay and we live happily ever after.”

 

Hermione felt dizzy with relief. Carefully, she slid her hands over his shoulders up to his neck. She kissed him lightly. “That sounds like a very nice dream.” While she did not have a plan, Draco’s seemed to be exceptionally detailed. “Is there any specific way you would like to be seduced?” she asked.

 

He burrowed his face into the crook of her neck and inhaled deeply, his arms tight around her. “You are really here.” She could feel his smile against her skin. “Consider me seduced.”

 

They managed to get her travelling cloak off her shoulders but the folds of fabric tangled with her boots when she tried toeing them off her feet. Frustrated, she gripped her wand and whispered “Divesto”.

 

Oh.

 

Her stomach plummeted. Suddenly bare, the reality of what they were about to do hit her with force. She tried to shift and hide a bit behind one of the bedposts.

 

“I… I don’t know how far I’ll be able to go tonight.”

 

Draco nodded earnestly, scooted up the mattress to the headboard, and extended his arms to her.

 

“Kiss? You know that we don’t actually have to do anything?”

 

Hermione clambered onto the bed. It was so much easier to straddle his legs and hide in his arms. The kissing was slow and unhurried and made her forget why she was in his bed. Draco trailed his hands over her arms and back, skimming them along her sides, making her giggle in surprise, and in the end she felt a little breathless.

 

She could feel how hard Draco was through his pyjama bottoms, obviously trying to still his hips, but unable to keep from restlessly shifting against her.

 

Feeling brave, she slid her hands between her legs and into the swollen folds of flesh and oh, she was wet and it felt good to touch. Trailing over her moist skin, she rubbed a little faster. Draco groaned and let his head fall back against the headboard. A sweet heat coiled in her womb and she suddenly felt a fierce want for normality, longed to be able to be close to Draco, to feel him where her body ached and strained for release.

 

Hermione gripped Draco’s waistband and pulled down. He closed his eyes and a full body shudder ran through him as his hard cock sprang free and curved towards his belly. His hands fluttered along her thighs to her waist and then left her as if burned. Draco tucked his hands under his hips and met her eyes.

 

“Touch me?”

 

He sounded so hopeful, her heart clenched. She reached for him but changed her mind at the last instant, skimming her hands along his abdomen, learning the softness of the vulnerable skin of his belly and the coarse hairs trailing down. She followed the path and finally wrapped her shaking hand around him. His hips bucked against her and she felt emboldened. Drawing back his foreskin, she revealed the shiny head and gave it a gentle lick. Draco keened below her with the effort of holding still.

 

Hermione wanted this to work, wanted things to fall into place and for all the bad to go away. Lifting herself up, she held his cock steady and moved her hips above him, back and forth, drawing the head through her folds, separating and spreading moisture. “O gods, are you sure? Are you sure?” He panted helplessly. She heard the ‘please’ even though it remained unspoken. Hermione let herself sink down, let gravity take its course. The stretch was both alien and familiar.

 

Her chest felt tight. It was time to move, to lift or rotate of grind. She fell forward and caught herself on shaking arms. A desperate sound escaped her. Instead of feeling liberated, strong and in control, it was like the last crack in her battered self had finally given way and she had fallen to the ground, shattering into pieces.

 

When she felt Draco’s hand on the back of her head the tears came. He was growing soft inside her and she cried harder, the taste of defeat filling her mouth. Draco tightened is arms around her and held on.

 

“I am sorry. This was stupid, I shouldn’t have pushed. I am sorry. Please. Forgive me. I. Please.”

 

An angry sob escaped her and she was sure she smeared drool and tears and possibly snot on Draco’s shoulder. She couldn’t bring herself to care and gasped for air before crying out wordlessly. She hardly registered being moved to her side.

 

“Here, let me. There, is that…” He huffed. “Of course it’s not.” He Accio'd something she didn’t bother to pay attention to, and seconds later, a soft piece of cotton flannel was pressed into her shaking hands.

 

“This always helped me when I was all alone in my room and the peacocks wouldn’t shut up with their eerie calling.”

 

She sniffed and trailed her fingers along the fabric, worn thin and soft from washing and spells. Draco pressed his forehead into her back between her shoulder blades.

 

“I am ruining everything," he said. "I am so sorry. I can go. Do you want me to go? I am going.”

 

Suddenly calm, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and held him where he was. “Did you just give me your blankie?” she asked.

 

He was utterly, utterly still before shifting minutely. “Maybe?”

 

“You might not ever get this back.”

 

This startles a laugh out of him and they manage to shift enough to kick and pull the duvet to fully cover them both.

 

“Let me tell you about Rome,” she said into the crook of his neck. “I hear it wasn’t built in a day.”

 

***

 

Sleep must have claimed her after all, as she woke in broad daylight, her thoughts and limbs feeling leaden and sluggish. For the first time in months, she felt rested, yet strangely hollow, a bit like waking up after a long New Year’s Eve and realising that the past year and the party that ended it had been more tiring than she had felt at the time.

 

Draco was propped on his side, playing with a twisted curl of her hair. A house elf popped into existence, holding a tall glass of water and a steaming wash cloth. “Is Miss feeling better?” asked the elf.

 

She struggled to sit up and took the cold glass slippery with condensation, drinking greedily, feeling her thirst more acutely once the first swallow had run down her throat. “Yes. Thank you,” she replied. The elf took the empty glass back and extended the wash cloth to her. Hermione scrubbed her face rigorously, feeling a bit fragile but strangely detached from the past.

 

Draco lightly kissed her shoulder. “There is a pyjama on the foot of the bed. I’d like to show you something when you are ready.”

 

She pulled on the soft garments, unconcerned about her nudity in front of him. She still recalled a morning several months ago, after he had taken her from the ward.

 

Draco took her by the hand and gently pulled her into the corridor. “Yule was the first time I stopped after you left. There had been so much to do and working helped with not dwelling… not thinking too much about things.” Draco took her hand and pulled her towards the broad staircase. “I’d like to show you something. Please?”

 

Portraits and tapestries whispered and rustled friendly as they passed. The pale afternoon light bathed the drawing room in twilight. If it weren’t for the lights on the tree, it would already be time to light a candle or two. Hermione had not looked at the tree last night, but now she realised that instead of minuscule fairies, candles sat on the branches. They not unlike the ones her grandparents had used on their tree, long ago. The tree shivered in pleasure at being regarded, and a drop of wax fell from one of the candles only to evaporate in mid-air before it could hit the sparkling glass ornament below.

 

“When I saw the elves decorating the tree, I heard the angry shrieks of the fairies just before they were silenced. I couldn’t bear it.” He opened and closed his mouth a few times as if he would like to say more but in the end decided against it. “They are now all back in the boxwood.” Draco lifted his wand and gently twirled it in direction of the tree. The candles started to blink very slowly, as if a gentle breeze were moving the branches they were sitting on.

 

“The chandler in Diagon was ecstatic about my request. He is saying that the news of Malfoy Manor using candles on a tree has started a new fashion and opened up a whole new market segment for him. ‘Homes and Hedges’ has asked me to open the manor for a special Christmas spread. Well, New Year’s, it would be now, I suppose.”

 

Draco kept adjusting delicate glass ornaments with tiny flicks of his wand. “I have taken over from de Belleme.” He was still not looking at her. “Got rid of some therapy equipment. Changed staff around, that sort of thing. We are doing a lot of seminars and courses for care wizards and apprentices at the moment. I spent nearly night and day at St. Mungo’s. Your book really helped. It was a bit like constantly thinking What would Hermione do?’” He laughed a little. “The hydrotherapy room now has a swimming pool.”

 

“Our book. Does the pool have mosaics?”

 

He smiled. “Naturally.”


	15. Ultio Dulcis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: In 1868, English Psychiatrist Henry Maudsley coined the term "masturbatory insanity" based on the assumed damage masturbation caused to the brain.
> 
> Also, this is it. I can't believe that after six years, this journey has finally come to an end.
> 
> A huge thank you goes to Softobsidian74, Stgulik and Mrequecky without whom I would probably still be flailing about in never-ending angst. Another huge thank you goes to all of you, whether you have been reading for six years or just found this fic now.
> 
> WARNING: This chapter has a pretty dark part. Or a delightful revenge part. You decide.

“A very interesting case, indeed,” a voice in lecturing tone floated through the ward. “Subject found in the Forbidden Forest, suffering from a number of symptoms including amnesia and extreme disorientation. An esteemed colleague and specialist in the field brought the subject to my attention. It seems that we have a rare case of Wizard’s Hysteria, possibly exacerbated by masturbatory insanity.”

 

Several voices murmured excitedly in response, the sound familiar and both comforting and alarming.

 

He still could not see who was speaking, unable to turn his head under the tight leather straps.

 

“As this is the first subject on which we will be able to test our improved procedures, a series of different treatments will be carried out, which will be scrupulously documented by all of you.”

 

A care wizard stepped up to his bed and removed the duvet, leaving him shivering in the cool air of the ward.

 

“As you can see,” and now he could finally see the speaker, a small man in Healer’s robes with a receding hairline, “the patient has received standard care and sedation.”

 

When he made an effort to look down, he could make out several Healers in training gathered around the foot of his bed. After a few seconds, he needed to close his strained eyes for a rest.

 

“Although equally rare in the Muggle world, I was able to uncover certain tried and tested treatment methods for male Muggle hysteria in my extensive research over the last years. I have adapted and refined the rather heavy-handed non magical attempts. And I will prove with the help of our patient, whom we have aptly named Joe Bloggs as a tip of the hat to the Muggle world, that Wizard’s Hysteria can be treated efficiently.”

 

Joe Bloggs? It did not ring a bell. Was he Joe?

 

A table of medical instruments was rolled to the side of the bed, and Joe wondered how he was so certain what it had been, even though he could not see what was happening.

 

“This is a Dittel Sound.”

 

A slim metallic steel? rod was held aloft and into Joe’s line of vision. It was long.

 

“Leopold Ritter von Dittel, a Muggle physician, yet quite talented, I must say, developed this instrument for the treatment of a number of ailments, including urethral strictures, overstimulation, ailments of the prostate and,” he paused dramatically, “hysteria!”

 

Urethral strictures? He felt an unaccountable wave of panic rise in him. Joe could understand what the Healer was saying. Why did he know what all this meant?

 

“I shall now demonstrate.”

 

Several pairs of feet shuffled closer. Joe began to thrash in his bindings. Irritated, the Healer lowered the metal rod and gestured toward the care wizards. They moved forward and belted down his hips with a wide strap. “Might as well take precautions,” he heard the Healer’s voice.

 

Joe could feel straps being pulled around his thighs and tightened before pulled outward and fastened to the bed, leaving him open and vulnerable. Unable to close his legs, he whimpered into his bit gag. The robe of the Healer brushed his side as he bent over Joe’s torso.

 

A clammy hand picked up his flaccid penis, grasped it just below the glans between two fingers and a thumb.

 

“As you can see, we use standard health and safety precautions as in every Hysteria case. A bit to prevent him from biting or choking on his own tongue, and bindings to keep him from injuring himself or medical staff. Experience shows that patients can indeed thrash rather violently, yet often involuntarily.”

 

The Healer still had a light grip on Joe's penis as if he had forgotten he was holding it.

 

“As we do not have any recent data to go on, we are going to start today with the traditional crocus oil based mixture to ease the way.” A care wizard handed a small phial containing a vaguely familiar yellow liquid. A few drops were carefully applied to the rod in the Healer's hands. “We will then test a variety of more recently developed substances including a variety of Muggle lubricants my assistant was able to procure at a curious Muggle apothecary called 'Shoes', of all things. We have yet to determine whether this is an attempt to conceal access to healthcare by confusing Muggles into thinking the apothecary a cobbler. It will be your responsibility to record the results and compile a comprehensive report on our findings. Some of the little flasks have promising inscriptions on them. I recall 'tingly', 'cooling' and 'warming'.”

 

Joe had started to breathe through his nose, trying to stave off his panic. He understood what the Healer was talking about and he understood the implications. Experimentation. Long term.

 

Turning back to Joe, the Healer lowered the steel rod to the soft genital in his hand. In a blind wave of panic, wanting to put his hands between his body and the... the instrument, Joe pulled on the leather straps around his wrists, chafing them in the process, a dull, burning pain like bracelets on his arms.

 

The tip slipped in.

 

“There, there.” For a moment the Healer lingered, not even a centimetre of oily metal invading the sensitive glans. “Do try to reassure the patient, as they are unlikely to grasp the paramount importance of treatment at this stage of therapy.”

 

He pushed, angling Joe's penis whichever way to make the curve slide in.

 

Wrong. Oh gods, so wrong. Joe felt like he needed to piss urgently. What was the... thing doing to him? It burned faintly, filling his urethra neatly, not leaving room for movement at all. Would it stopper him or override his muscles so he'd wet himself?

 

Another little push and he knew the instrument had reached his bladder. Joe whimpered behind his gag.

 

“As you can see, the subject will respond with an expression of discomfort and shame at first. It is important to go beyond and achieve acceptance.”

 

The flat end of the rod nestled in the sensitive tip of his glans. His skewered penis stood out obscenely from his body, feeling heavy and violated. The Healers in training crowded around the bed, trying to get a good observation post, quills and parchment at the ready. A cold sheen of sweat suddenly covered Joe's entire body, making him feel clammy and ill.

 

“Of course, we have much more sophisticated means than prone-to-malfunction Muggle machinery.” The Healer touched his wand to the flattened end of the rod. “Vibratum”

 

A spike of sensation that could have been searing pain or searing pleasure sliced through his abdomen. Maybe somebody was cutting him open right now to observe more closely, he would not have been able to tell. Joe shrieked and howled into his gag, lost in the urgent attempt of his body to get away. The straps held fast. Frowning, the Healer studied his deranged patient.

 

“Mr. Atroxin,” a thin Healer in training with mousy eyes snapped his attention to his mentor. “Do arrange a round of hydrotherapy to calm him down for the next cycle of therapy, right after we have studied the impact of different agents of lubrication.”

 

Joe could feel spit run down his neck while he tried to fight the gag. What would happen if he had to vomit? Oh gods, his stomach gave a painful heave.

 

“Paroxysm should be upon him any moment now.”

 

Every single muscle in his body seized and tried to fold himself in half, in a futile attempt to protect his belly and groin. The room lost colour and dimmed as if night was falling rapidly around him.

 

Loud ringing in his ears told him he was not dead. Possibly. His nose was blocked and he drew in air around his gag, hardly getting enough to stay lucid. Joe dimly realised that the vibrating spell must have been cancelled without him noticing.

 

“Very good, very good. A nice, strong paroxysm, especially for a first attempt, I should think.”

 

A hand wrapped around him squeezing the base of his penis, which felt disturbingly full and swollen. His stomach gave another fearful roll. The rod was withdrawn swiftly and slightly negligently from his softening penis. His seed pushed out in its wake and the sensation made his muscles clench in an afterthought of pleasure.

 

“Often, a successful session will end in another, gentler paroxysm. I think we can corroborate that this is indeed, fact.”

 

Joe felt so cold. The little group was moving towards the door, animated discussions slowly fading out until he was alone with the burly care wizard. A wet, warm flannel gently wiped away sweat and tears and snot from his face before the bit was removed from his mouth.

 

Joe didn't know why, but as the care wizard cleaned away the evidence of his therapy session from his abdomen and thighs, he told him what was on the forefront of his mind. Letting him know, making this man understand was of utmost importance.

 

“I am somebody. I am somebody. I am somebody.”

 

He did not stop until long after the straps had been removed from his hips and legs, the duvet placed over him and everybody had left.

 

***

 

“Hermione!” Draco stood in a sharp motion that made his chair clank against the hardwood floor of his office. “Is something wrong? Are the children all right?”

 

“The children are fine. They are with the nanny. Can't I visit my husband at work when I am in the area?” Hermione slowly wandered towards the privacy screen and stopped to stand in front of the examination table. She smoothed the white sheet that covered its surface. Her hands shook.

 

“You don't have to be here if you don't want to,” said Draco.

 

“No.” She clenched her hands into fist to stop the tremors. “I do have to be here. It's been several years. Things have changed. I will not let what happened limit me for the rest of my life.”

 

“Very well.” Draco pressed a kiss to her temple. “What would you like to see first? The hydro exercise chamber, the group rooms or the research lab?”

 

“The ward.”

 

Draco went very still.

 

“I think I need to see the ward,” she said again.

 

“Hermione, really, I...”

 

“No, Draco. It's all right. I need to see it. I need to see that it is different now.”

 

“You are shaking.” She raised her chin and looked at him in challenge. Draco sighed and took her hand, gently opening her tight fist. “Fine, but if I feel like it's too much at once, I will pull rank and remove you from the area.”

 

She smiled. “Lead the way, then, oh Head of Ward Three-and-a-half!” Draco had already opened the door when she hesitated and made him turn around. High above the door leading to the world of St Mungo’s, words were laid into the plaster in delicate, sparkling glass tesserae, as if they had been there since the very beginning.

 

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis*

 

“There is just one thing I need to do first.”

 

Hermione stepped over to the sideboard where the snitch was held in the eternal maelstrom of magic.

 

“Finite incantatem.”

 

The snitch shot from the confines of the little trophy and hovered above their heads, fluttering its wings in confusion, not knowing where to go beyond away.

 

Hermione held out her hand, palm up and after a few seconds, the snitch sank onto it, drawing its wings in. Resting.

 

“Now we can go.”

 

*The times are changed, and we are changed in them.


End file.
